Dude ignores the fact that 1) New York was the epicenter of the COVID pandemic just seven months ago; 2) infection rates were rising - and we know that once community spread happens, schools building get in trouble, too, and 3) infections were happening in the school buildings. 
https://twitter.com/PostOpinions/status/1330108135256829956
The only reason why school buildings in New York didn't experience (or, given that testing was random and many kids weren't tested because parents didn't give permission) was that only 300,000 kids were in the buildings. Or just 30% of 1 million students. @AmeshAA
Meanwhile in other places where school buildings have been open and lots of kids are allowed to attend, school buildings aren't the cordons solitaire folks want to believe them to be. Consider, Illinois...
https://twitter.com/dropoutnation/status/1329418089813962755
Certainly school buildings can be reopened when infection rates are under one-to-two percent ideally. Even then, only for hybrid focused on equity (kids with special needs and the like). But even CDC points out that buildings should be closed during mass community spread.
New York City is being conservative for a real good reason: More than 24,000 people died between March and May of this year because of high infection rates and community spread. That risk is still high because, well, the Big Apple is dense and is still a business destination.
If anything, the decision to close school buildings back in March - a decision Mayor Bill de Blasio delayed doing because of the needs of low income and homeless youth - saved lives, keeping folks out of public transit (which is how many kids and staff get to school buildings).
This point was made in an early study conducted about shutdowns of schools generally - and it has held up based on what has happened in places such as the U.K., Quebec and even some parts of the U.S. (and that's without expansive testing/tracing). jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/…
Note that ultimately, as heroic as New York was in reopening school buildings, the fact is that most families, especially Black and Latino fams affected hardest by COVID, didn't send kids back into school buildings. Which brings up Zimmerman's point...
https://twitter.com/AGZimmerman/status/1329858031748788224
How much energy has been spent on trying to reopen school buildings - or worse, on the politics of reopening during an uncontrolled pandemic - when school systems should have been allowed to improve virtual learning? Which is what most families wanted. nationalparentsunion.org/wp-content/upl…
By the way: Most of the students in New York City schools (and the majority of kids in most school systems overall) are Black, Latino and Indigenous.
They are the ones hit hardest by COVID, often dying at higher rates from it than White folks.
They are the ones hit hardest by COVID, often dying at higher rates from it than White folks.
https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1329950001166946305
So, as I keep saying, it may not be in the best interest of the majority of students to put them into the position of endangering their own families and communities, who also have the least healthcare access and are also the most-likely to die from a highly communicable disease.
New York City is an important example of how a school district can successfully reopen school buildings in periods of low infection rate. But it's just one example.
Not every school system has the capacities or resources that the Big Apple has.
Not every school system has the capacities or resources that the Big Apple has.
More importantly, what New York City did involved a lot of stakeholder input, including UFT and Black and Latino families,
It took a long time, took time away from improving virtual learning, and was bound to have be temporary simply because the pandemic is uncontrolled.
It took a long time, took time away from improving virtual learning, and was bound to have be temporary simply because the pandemic is uncontrolled.
If anything, New York's reopening of school buildings offers more lessons on the limits of what school systems and local governments can achieve in the face of deliberate federal inaction.
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