New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday he’s confident that all public school students will be able to return to in-person learning in the fall.
During an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Mr. de Blasio said that while many elementary schools have reopened for in-person learning, more resources like testing and vaccinations need to be put in place for reopening middle and high schools.
“We’re coming back in September full strength,” he said. “I don’t have a doubt in my mind. With the kind of goals that President Biden has set for vaccination, with our ability to vaccinate half-a-million people a week … no question in my mind we’re coming back strong in September in-person. And in the meantime … I want to get middle school open soon and then high school beyond. But we got to see what happens with this variant. We got to get more people vaccinated. We 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.”
MSNBC’s Willie Geist asked the mayor why middle and high schools were being treated differently, and why it’s supposedly “safe for those young students to be there and not the older ones.”
“I think it will be safe for the older ones, Willie, but we needed more testing capacity to get, first, the elementary schools done and special-ed and all of them,” the mayor responded. “Now we’re going to work our way to middle school. But right now, with this variant out there, I want to make sure we have all the tools in place to do it. And the number one thing is if I could just keep vaccinating, this would be moot, we could move on to middle school much more quickly.
Mr. de Blasio said the Biden administration needed to “aggressively” take over the distribution of the vaccine.
The mayor’s comments came just days after Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, told the Wall Street Journal that he could not guarantee the full reopening of schools in the fall.
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.