
When Will NYC High Schools Reopen?
NYC high schools will reopen for in-person learning on March 22 and all sports will return beginning mid-April.
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Safety protocols will continue at NYC schools as they had been in the past, like weekly in-person testing for students and staff, nightly deep-cleaning, mandated social distancing, mask wearing, and support and monitoring from the situation room. Additional staff have been hired to support NYC's Situation Room in responding quickly to schools and teams have been added to conduct weekly testing.
de Blasio says he anticipates NYC schools to be back 100 percent by September 2021 and this is a "major step towards that."
"I have to emphasize the value of schools for health overall. It's emotional health, it's mental health, it's physical health," says Jay Varma, MD, NYC's Senior Health Advisor. "Everything we do in life is about balancing risks. We have seen a risk of Covid, we know how real and dangerous it is, and we have developed a model to reduce that risk. What we haven't done is figure out a model to reduce the isolation and the mental and emotional and physical harms from being separated. The best approach to that is to bring kids back to in-person schooling and we only do that when we have found a way to reduce and manage the risk of Covid, which we have developed a very successful model for doing."
So what does this mean for students, teachers, and parents in NYC schools?
One thing Mayor de Blasio urges parents to do is fill out and turn in the COVID-19 testing consent form, which he says, “will be absolutely required for any child to come into the school.”
Everything we know about the 2020-2021 NYC public school calendar can be found here.