08 December,2020 08:04 AM IST | New York | Agencies
Parents protest demanding that public schools remain open, outside New York's City Hall on November 19. Pic/AFP
It's back to school again for some New York City schoolchildren, weeks after the schools were closed to in-person learning because of rising COVID-19 infections. This comes amid worsening situation in the US and just three days after the mayor warned of looming second outbreak of infection in the city.
The city's public school system, which shut down in-person learning earlier this month, will bring back on Monday preschool students and children in kindergarten through fifth grade whose parents chose a mix of in-school and remote learning. Special education students in all grades who have particularly complex needs will be welcomed back starting Thursday.
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on November 18 that public school buildings would close because the city had crossed a threshold set earlier of 3% of all the tests performed over a seven-day period coming back positive.
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The rate of positive COVID-19 tests is now over 5%, according to the city's figures, but de Blasio has said it's safe to reopen schools with beefed-up testing protocols - in part because few infections have been linked to the schools.
"We have facts now for two straight months of extraordinarily low levels of transmission in our schools. Our schools are safer than pretty much any place else in New York City."
About 1,90,000 students will be eligible to return to school buildings starting Monday. However, on December 3, De Blasio had said that the NYC is heading for a second surge. "It's quite clear at this point that this second wave, unfortunately, is right upon us," the Wall Street Journal quoted him as saying.
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