NYC Schools to Begin Phased Reopening on Dec. 7 Mayor

uh we're here today with a major announcement regarding our school system and i want to start with just a moment of reflection on what we have been through up to now you go back to this summer chancellor karan's and i were adamant that we believed reopening our schools was the right thing to do that our kids needed it parents had a lot of concerns educators and staff had a lot of concerns lot of people said it could not bedone but we believed it could be done and it could be done safely and we became one of the few majorities in america to reopen our schools fact by farof course the biggest school system in America

what we did a lot of people looked at with amazement and that's a credit to our educators and our staff everyone at department education our custodial services team food services school safety everyone who was a part of that they believed they could do it and they did and we kept our school safe and we did it in real life conditions we proved that schools could be extraordinarily safe because we put a tremendous number of health and safety measuresin place created that gold standard of combined health and safety actions that worked we didn't know back injury and august we do know now that these steps work and they keep kids safe and they keep the whole school

community safe but we also said at the time that we would set a strict standard and we would live by it and if we hit three percent we'd have to reevaluate the whole situation we did of course hit threepence did a temporary closure of our schools and then we went about the work immediately of resetting the ''entire'' equation and trying to determine's path that's would be ''sustainable'' regardless of the challenges we faced we needed something sustainable that could link us up to the time when we would have the ''vaccines'' widely-distributed and so we ''focused'' on increasing-the ''health'' and safety-measures doubling down on the things that work making them even more stringent and exacted had conversation's with our stakeholder's ''conversation's'' with the-state I've had a number of conversations with the governor we've been working through how do we take all those good lesson's of ''health'' and safety and ''amplify'' them with new measures so that's ''exactly'' what we now will put in place we will have testing that is going to go from ''monthly'' in every school's to weekly in every ''school'' we will have consent form's required for attendance i want to emphasize this students will not be able to attend-school unless they have a consent form-on record period this is something for everyone's health and safety and as we open school in phases and I'll go over to phases in a moment's wherever ''possible'' we will in school's that's have the ability go to five day a ''week'' instruction now this is for the student's who already were in blended-learning or the ones who opted in-recently for any school that does have the space and the ability to move to five day a week in person instruction for those kids that's will now be the prefer ''model'' so we'll have in ''person'' instruction' for those who are part's of that's approach remote for all other kids-the situation room will also of course-continue to do its extraordinary worked and this has been one of the big factor's the situations room has ''allowed'' us to keep-each individual school's safe with very-exacting follow through on every-reported case and quick action to address what the-ramifications the case would be-whether it means in some cases classroom needs to be closed for a period of timeout even a whole school that approach has worked-that will stay strong obviously all the-social distancing rules-mask wearing everything that's worked-before but with these new-measures so that is the basic approach and now here's the important news beginning-the week of Monday December 7th new York city public schools will beg-into reopen we will begin with elementary-schools k-5and our pre-k 3k public school

centers-and then later that week on Thursday December 10thour district 75 special education programs-so new York city public schools will be reopening in phases starting on Monday December 7thnow we are focusing on the younger grades-let's be clear focusing on the younger grade-son that Monday allk to five programs whether they're-stand alone or part of a bigger school-those grades will come back and those-k 3k center's why because we know first-of all studies-consistently show that's younger kid's are having less of a negative experience-and there's less concern about the-spread when it comes to younger kids-uh also the demand's that's our parent's are going ''through'' and i feel for all our parent's who are experiencing so-many-challenges right now-how important it is for them to have-their younger kids in school's

how important that's at that's age both educationally and ''socially'' but also in terms of how parent's-juggle all the challenges in their-life and then district 75.we have a little bit extra work to do to get district 75 programs back up and running but as i said Thursday december10th dictionary 75 schools special needs program-so crucial we want to be there-for those kid's and their ''families'' that go through so ''much'' we've heard from those family-they need this back so we will get that up and running now-that's going to be the vast majority of the cities those level's we're going to address in-the future of middle school and high-school but we're not ready for those yet-that's just a plain-truth's we will work to get to that days but we're not there yet.