On Monday, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced, public high schools in New York will welcome students for in-person instruction on 22nd March. This is the latest step taken by the USA’s largest school system to reopen classrooms shut due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We have all the pieces we need to bring high school back and bring it back strong, and, of course, bring it back safely,” de Blasio told a news conference. “We are bringing our schools back fully in September, period.”
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The mayor had announced to shut down schools across the city in mid-November because of the increasing COVID-19 infection rate. Now, gradually students are brought back to classrooms, starting with the youngest students, followed by middle school students last month.
De Blasio had promised high school students would not be far behind.
New York City’s school system is the largest in the United States with 1.1 million students and 1,800 buildings.
The move of reopening schools comes at a time when the number of new COVID-19 cases has sharply declined from a post-holiday surge. The number of hospitalized patients fell below 40,000 on Sunday for the first time since Oct 20, compared with an all-time high of more than 132,000 recorded on Jan 6.