Coronavirus: in New York, the slow and difficult return to school

Posted on Sep 24, 2020 at 12:56 PM

The school bags are still in the cupboards. The 1.1 million children in New York’s 1,870 public schools did not return to school until Monday. And, apart from the little ones aged 3 and 4, they have only, so far, turned on their computers. Last week, the mayor of the city, Bill de Blasio, announced to everyone’s surprise that the “physical” start of the school year for students was still postponed to the end of September and the beginning of October, depending on their ages. At the end of August, the mayor had already announced that the return to school, scheduled for September 10, was postponed by eleven days.

It is not the evolution of Covid-19 that directly justifies these postponements: since the end of July , New York City observes a positive test rate of less than or around 1% – it was 7.2% in Paris the week of the start of the school year. A performance after a deadly spring (23,700 dead in the city, for 8 million inhabitants).

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