Science!
Gee, I wonder why Americans don’t put their trust in their elected leadership these days? After Bill de Blasio closed schools in New York City, supposedly on the basis of science, parents and health experts erupted in protest. No data actually supported the idea that elementary schools spread COVID-19, especially not anywhere near the levels to which bars and restaurants do — which de Blasio wants to keep open. Today, de Blasio suddenly backpedaled, at least partially: Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Sunday that he would reopen public elementary schools, abruptly shifting policy in the face of widespread criticism that New York City was placing more of a priority on economic activities like indoor dining than the well-being of its children. Mr. de Blasio said that middle and high schools would remain closed, but he also signaled that he would overhaul how the city manages schools during the pandemic, which has forced millions of children in the United States out of schools and is widely perceived to have done significant damage to their education and mental health. The mayor said the city would abandon a 3 percent test positivity threshold that it had adopted for closing the school system, the largest in the country, with 1.1 million children. And he said the system would aim to give most parents the option of sending their children to school five days a week, which would effectively end the so-called hybrid learning system. Good news? Sorta. Leave it to de Blasio to offer a particularly douche-tastic codicil on returning to classrooms. Students are only eligible if they already signed up for the hybrid learning program, which leaves two-thirds of Big Apple schoolkids still locked out: Students can return only if they have already signed up for in-person learning, meaning fewer than 335,000 of the city’s schoolchildren, or roughly a third, are even eligible. That’s because de Blasio and Andrew Cuomo did their level best to frighten parents out of using any in-person option at all. They only gave them a few weeks to suss out the situation, weeks in which the pair kept hinting that schools would have to be closed. Guess what they chose to do? Several weeks before Mayor Bill de Blasio shut New York City’s school system, the nation’s largest, amid a surge in coronavirus cases, he handed parents a daunting deadline: They had only a few weeks to decide if their children would return to classrooms this school year, and likely until at least next fall.
