When NYC Public Schools Reopen Monday, Some Parents Plan To Sit It Out

Nearly a million students are expected to return to New York City’s public school buildings on Monday in what officials are calling a “homecoming” after a year and a half of remote and hybrid learning.

The Department of Education has spent the summer preparing, but some parents worry these measures will not adequately protect their children from COVID-19 and say they do not feel safe sending their kids back. Come Monday, they may not.

“I just know there’s nothing I can do when they’re squeezed into a classroom or an auditorium where spread is going to happen,” said Brooklyn mom Naomi Alexis. “I know it’s going to happen … They are calculating the risk of some children getting sick.”

The city says it has implemented a broad spectrum of COVID precautions: reorganizing classrooms to increase social distancing, upgrading ventilation, rolling out new test and quarantine protocols, implementing a vaccine mandate for educators and campaigning to get teenagers inoculated.

Many schools said they can achieve three feet of social distance—measured nose-to-nose—between desks as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But some facilities are struggling to keep students spaced in classrooms, lunchrooms and other common areas. While most of the city’s nearly 59,000 classrooms are listed as having operational ventilation, WNYC/Gothamist found 4,000 rely solely on windows—which city officials say are adequate but independent engineers call unreliable. Some parents and educators have criticized the decision to scale back testing to once every two weeks, with no consequences for opting out...

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