More than 30 years after the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act, just one-third of the city’s public schools are accessible to people with physical disabilities: ny1.com/nyc/all-boroug… This limits the educational options available to children who use wheelchairs, like 14-year-old Mia Simpson.

“It saddens me that a child has to be excluded from programs that they might enjoy, that they might like, just because of physical disability,” her mom said.

.@NYCMayor says new CDC guidance will help city schools “reach more kids” The CDC has evaluated the evidence and has decided the distance between children in schools can go from six feet to three feet,
@NYCMayor says, and that will mean a NEW opt-in period for students.

NEW: NYC middle school buildings will re-open February 25th. About 62,000 students who previously opted-in to in-person instruction will be able to attend. That’s out of about 196,000 middle school students total. School staff will be back the day before, Feb. 24th. DOE says there are plans to increase the capacity of the situation room, which tracks cases, and its school testing teams.

Last week, Sofia, 16, a non verbal District 75 student, saw a school bus parked on her street.

She put on her coat and backpack; she used her speech device to say she wanted to go to school.

She stayed there most of the day. Her mom snapped this photo.

ny1.com/nyc/all-boroug… District 75 schools re-open this week and @NYCMayor himself says these students need school the most.

Despite having just 5 students, Sofia’s class still won’t have full in person learning. She’ll be in school every other week. The week she’s not there, her classroom is empty.

Not every school will be able to have students attend five days a week, as I outlined earlier this week.

Today @nycmayor says in those schools, they’ll aim to find kids who need it most and give them five days a week, while other kids stay staggered.

ny1.com/nyc/all-boroug… .@NYCMayor also reiterating some ground rules for school families:
—Kids won’t be allowed to attend in person without permission slips
—If you signed up for blended learning you have to show up and if you don’t, you’ll be switched to remote learning

There seems to be a lot of confusion about the move to five days a week! The city is not suddenly doubling class sizes. This is happening essentially because many fewer kids opted in to blended than expected... ...so few opted in (or actually showed up) that, in some unknown number of schools, they don't need to be split into multiple cohorts.

This is already the reality at some schools -- so many students are all-remote that in-person kids attend five days a week.

Something to consider when comparing the school test positivity rate (which has been low) with the broader NYC test rate:

The school rate only includes tests done in school. If you’re in school to get a test, presumably you show no symptoms — or else you’d have stayed home. So the school tests should mainly be catching only those cases that are asymptomatic.

Unlike the citywide rate, which would include people going to get a test because they think they might have covid.

In case you missed it this morning, I asked @UFT President Michael Mulgrew whether he was open to changing the 3% number for opening/closing schools. He says he prefers a more geographic approach: One point Mulgrew made earlier: he thinks the governor's orange zone method makes more sense because it closes other things in addition to schools. Inside schools, people wear masks, rates are low. Outside, not always the case, and eventually, that could penetrate schools.

“No one is happy about this decision we all in fact are very sad about this decision,” @NYCMayor says of closing schools. “But we set a very clear standard and we need to stick to that standard.” .@NYCMayor says he spent much of the morning talking to the state, which... you wouldn’t know from the governor’s presser

NEW: As schools face a staffing crunch, @NYCSchools will no longer require that blended learning students be given synchronous (aka live) instruction every day they're remote. Live teaching time will vary by school. Fully remote will still get live teaching daily. More soon. Schools will no longer be required to offer ANY live instruction on blended students' remote days if they don't have the staff available to do so.
This is a major change in guidance, and in what students will experience, and comes, oh, 12 hours before they're logging on tomorrow.

NEW: Blended learning students will have separate teachers for the days they are in person and the days they are remote, and those teachers will work as a team, per new guidance @NYCSchools has sent to principals. The city is ALSO creating a new job title of "virtual content specialist," to help provide instructional resources for online learning. Seems that they have not even posted these jobs yet, two weeks out:
"Additional guidance on posting and filling the role is forthcoming."

Amid big questions about whether schools are ready to open Sept. 10th, @NYCMayor showing a slick video promising that schools will have what they need to open. Meanwhile, principals say they have no clue how much PPE they'll get or when it will arrive. "Whatever our schools need, they're going to have. We're going to send them the supplies in bulk before school begins and then re-stock as needed," @NYCMayor says.

Here’s my story on what’s been happening at Success Academy in recent days: ny1.com/nyc/all-boroug… I spoke to Ebony Woods, a former staffer at Success Springfield Gardens where a white assistant principal put up a bulletin board that immediately struck black educators as inappropriate. It featured black children hanging upside down from a branch covered in a leafy vine.

One thing I like to do when I’m stressed out is make ravioli from scratch. It takes all day, it’s repetitive, it keeps my hands busy, it’s hard but not too hard to do while enjoying a glass of wine or two. And the reward is ravioli.

This is about to become a ravioli account. We start with the pasta. I use a mix of semolina flour and Italian 00 flour. The semolina adds flavor; the 00 adds elasticity. It’s also great for pizza dough.

NEW: @NYCSchools has released preliminary enrollment data for District 15 in Brooklyn, where a diversity plan removed all screens from middle schools. We've previously seen stats on seat offers, but not enrollment. @NYCSchools This district includes neighborhoods like Park Slope, that tend to be whiter and wealthier, and neighborhoods like Sunset Park and Red Hook, overall less white and less wealthy. For years, some schools in the district served many more non-white, low-income students than others.

It's Martin Luther King Jr. Day at the National Action Network House of Justice in Harlem, where @TheRevAl is ripping into @realDonaldTrump, calling his visit to the MLK monument "a drive-by" he only did after being attacked for having no schedule today. No surprise to anyone who has ever seen Chuck Schumer speak at a graduation, but he is giving essentially the same speech he gave at NAN a year ago -- quoting the Shirelles: "Mama said there'd be days like this," in talking about Trump's election.