NEW YORK - Of all the challenges that Mayor Bill de Blasio faced in his push to reopen the nation's largest school system in a pandemic, the city's powerful teachers union presented the most formidable obstacle, threatening an illegal strike as soon as this week.
"For the nation's largest school system to come together in unity and say, we are going to get it right, and it won't always be easy and there'll be tough moments along the way, but we're going to get it right - that's a statement," Mr de Blasio said during a morning news conference. While the city has made progress in distributing personal protective equipment to schools, hiring nurses for every school building and upgrading ventilation systems in classrooms, that work is far from complete.
The city's teachers union, which has not staged a strike in nearly half a century, was poised to authorise its 75,000 members to walk off the job. Still, if the mayor succeeds in bringing many of New York's children back into classrooms, he will stand apart from every other big-city mayor in America, all of whom have opted to start the school year remote-only, as the virus has surged in their cities and political opposition to reopening has intensified.
The frenzy of late-night talks were in keeping with the last few frantic weeks of preparation, and understandably so: The push to reopen schools, which is crucial for New York City's economic recovery, has been an enormous effort. But the mayor's insistence that schools would be ready to reopen as originally scheduled on Sept. 10 frustrated many teachers and principals, who said they did not believe de Blasio understood the depth of the challenges they faced on the ground.
Beyond safety concerns, educators said they did not know how many children would actually report to school, or how many staff they would have to teach students in the building and online. The research on school reopening in places with similarly low virus transmission rates largely bolsters the mayor's decision to welcome children back into classrooms. Research from Europe has shown that schools can successfully open as long as the virus is contained in their region and families understand there will be some unavoidable turbulence.
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