De Blasio Vows NYC Schools Will Reopen In September At "Full Strength"

New York City’s public schools will be open at “full strength” in the fall, Mayor Bill de Blasio vowed on Tuesday.

During an appearance on MSNBC, de Blasio declared, “We’re coming back in September full strength. I don’t have a doubt in my mind.”

The optimistic assessment is at odds with a recent statement from the head of the United Federation of Teachers union, Michael Mulgrew, who said last week that he would resist fully reopening schools until all teachers were vaccinated.

The UFT has partnered with NYU Langone Health and EmblemHealth hospitals to vaccinate its membership, which includes about 75,000 teachers, though many of those members are retired. As of Monday, City Hall was unable to say how many teachers have been vaccinated for COVID-19 so far.

Last week, the UFT said they had matched 9,000 of their members who wanted the vaccine to healthcare providers for appointments. But Mulgrew said he’s concerned about the city’s vaccination rollout, which has been hampered by distribution and supply issues.

“I want to be fully open in September, and I can’t guarantee that right now,” Mulgrew said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal Friday.

While the city maintains that its in-school random testing protocol has shown low rates of transmission of COVID-19 in school communities, critics caution that the DOE’s rates don’t factor in outside testing results for students who may get tested at medical facilities or family doctors.

Since December, all middle and high school students have been enrolled in full-time remote learning, while 3K and elementary schools, and schools serving students with disabilities are open for a blend of remote and in-person learning. Still, as of Monday there were 148 classrooms closed because of COVID-19 cases.

De Blasio said he hoped to reopen middle and high schools this school year for in-person learning, but he’s worried about the more contagious variants of COVID-19 that have been recently detected in the city.

“I want to get middle school open soon and then high school beyond,” de Blasio said on MSNBC. “But we got to see what happens with this variant. We've got to get more people vaccinated. We've got to have more testing capacity. I’m certain we’ll do it over time in this school year, but a few challenges we got to overcome first.”