NYC’s schools forever changed by COVID-19

New York City schools are forever changed since COVID-19′s March 2020 arrival — and some ways are just becoming clear two years later.

A forced year-and-a-half-long experiment in remote learning and the cascading economic, medical and emotional fallout of the pandemic left an indelible mark on the nation’s largest school system.

Some of the changes can be measured in numbers: 73,000 fewer K-12 students on school rosters after a pandemic-fueled enrollment decline; an extra $9 billion in the Education Department’s budget this year thanks to a flood of state and federal recovery dollars, and the exodus of more than 1,000 school safety agents and 3,800 classroom paraprofessionals since summer 2020.

And the most jarring number — at least 91 DOE employees and parents of an estimated 2,900 city kids who lost their lives to the virus in the harrowing first months alone.

Other changes are harder to quantify: A new embrace of technology in schools after a forced shift to remote learning; an upending of academic measures that schools have relied on for decades; a greater appreciation for the small joys of the student-teacher bond; lingering trauma and loss that will shape the lives of kids and educators for years to come...

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny-covid-changes-nyc-schools-for-good-20220312-yqjukuqwkfhmzjqmwpvkq6lqly-story.html