NYC public primary schools to re-open after sudden policy change

De Blasio further made it known that the school system will be moving as much as possible away from a hybrid model and toward a standard five day school week model, as it was before the pandemic.

NYC's public schools had closed again in the middle of November amid concerns of a second wave of the novel coronavirus hitting the city. The positivity rate for tests went above 3%, which was previously marked as a key metric for having to close the schools down again. This metric has now been abandoned in favor of a method that more closely examines cases that impact classrooms directly, according to The New York Times.

The city is now beginning to re-open the schools after many critics have been taking the NYC administration to task for focusing on other issues like being able to eat inside a restaurant, rather than the education of the city's children.

"We went about the work immediately of resetting the entire equation and trying to determine a path that would be sustainable regardless of the challenges we faced. We needed something sustainable that could link us up to the time we would have the vaccine 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 exacting," de Blasio said.

Everybody in the public school system will be required to undergo weekly tests for the virus in order to enter the building, and parents will be required to sign consent forms for said tests.

At this time, there is no information on when and how secondary and post-secondary institutions will re-open in the state

People on Twitter are visibly still confused and angry at what many perceive as flip-flopping by de Blasio.

"So basically elementary schools get a reprieve for another two weeks and then go back and when they go back, still only 20% will be tested and still early childhood kids will not be tested?! @NYCMayor@DOEChancellor you just love playing this open/shut them game"

"… LaMistakeDeBlasio …#nycschools ##Covid_19"

"MAKE UP UR MIND"