November 18, 2020
Schools out. Mayor de Blasio announced today that NYC public school buildings will close as the City’s Covid-19 test positivity rate hit 3%. All-remote classes will continue, possibly for the remainder of the year, as the dreaded ‘second wave’ of Covid-19 appears to have arrived here after a summer long reprieve.
Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good afternoon, everyone. Everyone has been working so hard to fight back the coronavirus. New Yorkers continue to do the right thing, getting tested. So much going on, but this morning we had bad news. We spent some time confirming it and double checking it, because it is exactly on the number of 3.00 percent. But unfortunately, as of today, on our seven-day rolling average for corona virus positivity, New Yorker City had exactly 3.0 percent, and, as a result, we do need to close our schools for the coming days. No one is happy about this decision, we all in-fact are feeling very sad about this decision, because so much good work has been put into keeping the schools open – and opening them up to begin with, let’s start there – opening the schools when almost no other major school system in America opened making them so safe. But we set a very clear standard and we need to stick to that standard, and I want to emphasize to parents, to educators, to staff, to kids that we intend to come back and come back as quickly as possible. We are working right now with the State of New York, and that was a lot of what we talked about this morning. I had a number of conversations with the Governor and our teams have been talking throughout the morning on exactly what it would take to come back and bring our schools back quickly. And it will be a higher standard. I want that to be clear. We have a stringent health and safety standard right now. We’re going to have to raise that up even higher to be able to bring our schools back but that’s exactly what we intend to do. We’re going to have to focus even more on testing. And I want to emphasize, testing is going to be crucial to the successful reopening of our schools and everyone has got to get engaged even more on testing. I guarantee you that part of that plan will be an even heavier emphasis on testing and therefore want to say to everyone in the school communities, starting with parents and kids, we need to get those testing consent forms even as we’re in this moment of pause. We need to get ready to come back. We need everyone to get those testing consent forms in so we can get into a deeper testing regime.
The State – the Governor and I spoke several times. Obviously, he has laid out some of the additional measures the State likely will be taking quite soon in New York City. Additional restrictions across the board that will affect a number of different industries, a number of different parts of life in this city because we are dealing with a bigger problem all over New York City and state, all over the country, the region. We have to do more to fight back this second wave. So, the State has made very clear additional restrictions are coming and coming soon. But we’re focused on now is making sure that we are working with all families to get them the remote learning they need in the interim, that we’re putting more stringent measures in place so we can get schools back up and running soon, that we can protect New Yorkers across the board working with the State to take the right steps to make sure that we address the kind of activities that might create a particular danger and keep people safe. It will come back every single time to the basics, to the mask wearing, to getting the tests. We’re going to keep going deeper on that.
But I want to affirm, before I turn to the Chancellor, I want to affirm that as much as we are unhappy today that this moment was reached, we are resolved to keep fighting. That is what New Yorkers do. And we will overcome this moment. Remember, thank God we’re having this conversation with the backdrop of not one but two vaccines now on the horizon and the fact that we expect to get a lot more support from Washington going forward on a variety of fronts. So, we’re going to fight this back. This is a setback but it’s a setback we will overcome. And I know our Chancellor and everyone at the DOE today is sad that this moment has come but now are resolute about making sure we serve families and kids in the meantime and then getting back up and running with our schools as quickly as possible.
More here.