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The mayor should reopen schools following the CDC approved guidelines. The benefits would be a transition back into normalcy, as well as once again provide a space for children to learn and grow. The CDC stated that schools are a important part of the infrastructure of communities, so the reopening of schools is important. The costs would be the chance for another outbreak, as well as reopening itself would most likely be expensive

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The mayor should at the least consider opening schools while releasing safety measures because the city is in a lot better place than it was before.

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The mayor should re open schools. One of the costs to this decision is catching covid and not much of social distancing because many kids in the hallways. A benefit would be kids are able to learn better in person, students would be able to get work done and go back to having a somewhat normal life. This decision is best because

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There are many benefits as to why schools should reopen, while still taking the downsides into consideration. The benefits outweigh the cons.
A few of the benefits or reopening school is that it allows for people to remain active in a safe and efficient learning environment allowing for parents to return to work without having to worry if kids are or aren't doing their work at home. Additionally, wearing masks properly while keeping social distancing should reduce the risk of contracting the virus. The cons of this decision is that inevitably people will be more exposed to the virus however it is still helpful to attempt since even if someone contracts the virus a student wouldn't be in danger as they can just return to online education. Overall, the pros outweigh the cons. - Eduardo D.

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The Mayor's decision in reopening the schools in NYC should be determined by many things, infection rate in nearby areas, vaccination, and other key details can change whether a school is safe to reopen. The schools should reopen, but under specific conditions to prevent people from getting Covid-19. Mask restrictions, and safe distancing should be required in order to prevent the virus from spreading within schools. As well as no symptoms shown of the virus while within the school

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The mayor should reopen schools live in NYC during the pandemic. The costs would the risks of catching Covid-19 along with being around others. But the benefits is focus along with access to things some people don't have access to at home. it also costs more money to take all the necessary precautions but the benefits is that everyone is safe while still learning. "These needs cost money. But the cost of keeping our children, families, and educators safe is nothing when compared with the cost of inaction."

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The mayor should allow students to have the choice of remote learning but still reopen schools for live/in person learning. The costs of this decision would be that not all students would be at school, the benefits of this decision is that not only will students feel comfortable making their own decision, but their parents as when can feel comfortable knowing that their children are safer at home with less of a risk of contracting COVID-19.This decision is best based on the cost and benefits of this decision because it takes into account not only how the mayor or board of ed feels about the situation, but everyone else's feelings about it as well including parents and students.

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The mayor should allow the choice for schools to reopen during this point in the pandemic. The city is in a better circumstances that they previously were in causing the closing of schools . The cost of reopening schools can result in cover cases rising, the benefits of this decision will allow students to resume back to learning and being in a learning environment. This decision is best based on the costs and benefits because it's a hard decision to make without considering both.

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Statement of President Joe Biden on Safely Reopening Schools

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Statement of President Joe Biden on Safely Reopening Schools

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But we can do more. Shortly before taking office, I set an ambitious but achievable goal of opening most K-8 schools by the end of my first 100 days. I've said all along that this is a national imperative - one that can only be achieved if Congress provides states and communities with the resources they need to get it done safely through the American Rescue Plan.

It is also a goal we can meet if we follow the science. Today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC, has provided the best available scientific evidence on how to reopen schools safely.

These scientific guidelines tell us that our schools are safer when we have appropriate distancing in classrooms and on school buses, when masks are worn consistently and properly, when handwashing occurs regularly, and when we are able to effectively respond to cases through testing and contact tracing, and when we follow other recommended steps. To meet these guidelines, some schools will need more teachers and support staff to ensure smaller class sizes, more buses and bus drivers to transport our kids safely, more spaces to conduct in-person instruction, and more protective equipment, school cleaning services, and physical alterations to reduce the risk of spread of the virus.

These needs cost money. But the cost of keeping our children, families, and educators safe is nothing when compared with the cost of inaction. Today, an entire generation of young people is on the brink of being set back up to a year or more in their learning. We are already seeing rising mental health concerns due in part to isolation. Educational disparities that have always existed grow wider each day that our schools remain closed and remote learning isn't the same for every student. Our educators are frontline workers who are doing everything they can to protect and educate our students, despite a lack of resources and as districts face budget crises that risk education jobs. Moms - and dads - are exiting the workforce in astonishing numbers in order to care for and manage the school experience for their children at home, hindering their own opportunities and further undermining the health of our economy.

We have sacrificed so much in the last year. But science tells us that if we support our children, educators, and communities with the resources they need, we can get kids back to school safely in more parts of the country sooner.

When my Secretary of Education is confirmed, I will task him with working alongside school administrators, educators, and parents to safely accelerate the process of school reopenings. As many states continue to follow the CDC's recommendation to prioritize teachers for vaccination, I urge all states to follow suit.

And given the irreversible costs of inaction, Congress needs to pass the American Rescue Plan right away - for our children, our families, our community, and our country.

We know what we need to do.

We need to move fast.

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Statement of President Joe Biden on Safely Reopening Schools | The White House

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But we can do more. Shortly before taking office, I set an ambitious but achievable goal of opening most K-8 schools by the end of my first 100 days. I've said all along that this is a national imperative - one that can only be achieved if Congress provides states and communities with the resources...

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Operating Schools Operating Schools During COVID-19

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Operating Schools Operating Schools During COVID-19

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Some U.S. schools have already begun the 2020-21 academic year, with thousands more set to launch in the next few weeks. Americans would be well-served to look beyond the country's borders for signs of how school reopenings might go and lessons they might learn.

In the United States, the volley of conflicting guidance documents and policy recommendations for safe schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic has been difficult to parse, and tensions are high as the stakes for key decisions have life-and-death implications.

Numerous countries managed to reopen school buildings earlier this year, and the resulting successes and failures are instructive.

The Kaiser Family Foundation published a side-by-side comparison of the rate of positive COVID-19 tests on the day of school reopenings in 13 different countries. All but two had a national positivity rate below 4 percent on the day schools reopened. As of July 29, when some school building reopenings in the U.S. were just weeks away in some states, the positivity rate in the U.S. was 8.3 percent, according to the Kaiser report, which drew from data compiled by the Our World in Data initiative, based at the University of Oxford in England. None of the 13 countries examined by Kaiser reopened school buildings when the positivity rate was as high as that of the U.S.

As of this week, several states-including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and Texas -were recording positivity rates between 10 and 25 percent, much higher than the rates in countries where the government and public health officials deemed schools safe to reopen.

School reopenings have been most successful in countries that have significantly outpaced the United States' ability to test for COVID-19, trace and isolate potentially infected people, and flatten the curve of new cases and hospitalizations. The United States currently accounts for 4 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's COVID-19 cases.

That said, there's plenty of turmoil around the world. Kenya has canceled the rest of the school year and plans to require students to restart in the same grade when school resumes in 2021. Bolivia canceled the last few months of the school year and won't resume until 2021. Mexico's school buildings will remain closed this fall, and all students will learn via television broadcasts.

As in the United States, reopening plans in Canada differ from one province to the next, and they're still forming as the school year is set to begin later this month. One province, British Columbia, has delayed the start of the school year from Sept. 8 to Sept. 10, giving teachers and staff a little more time to plan for students' return.

See Also: Special Report: How We Go Back to School

In Toronto, the traditional September-to-January semester for high schoolers will be halved into a " quadmester." Instead of taking four courses for the first half of the year, students will take two courses from September to November and then two more from November to January. One group of students will visit the school building for class each morning, and another group will visit each afternoon. Elementary schools in Toronto tend to have small enough class sizes that social distancing in-person is possible and schedule disruptions won't be dramatic.

Other countries have already begun reopening school buildings, with mixed results. Here's a look at three of them.

How Reopening Worked: Schools shut down in March as the country began a month of lockdown. By April, the country's caseload had diminished to the extent that leaders felt comfortable reopening school buildings with a shortened day and requirements for social distancing. The country has not widely adopted masks, and teachers and staff were not required to wear them while at school.

On-the-Ground Perspective: Courtney Lockett is a kindergarten teacher at the Esbjerg International School on the west coast of Denmark. Her school opened on April 16 with requirements for two meters (roughly 6.5 feet) of space between desks, and recommendations to encourage hand-washing and teach outside as much as possible.

Parents are no longer allowed to enter the building, and class sizes were reduced, with the goal of keeping small groups of students together for the entire school day, rather than mixing people and increasing the risk of exposure to someone who is sick. Some teachers who previously taught a single subject were expected to become all-purpose classroom teachers. Dividers and temporary fences kept small groups of students from mixing while on the playground for recess.

The school day ended at 1 p.m., two hours earlier than usual. Lockett and her colleagues were encouraged to pare down the curriculum and focus on the essentials. "Under the circumstances that we were in, it just wasn't possible to have normal teaching," she said.

Older students stuck to the social-distancing requirements for the most part, Lockett said, but "it's just not possible to keep 4- and 5-year-olds from playing next to each other and touching each other," Lockett said. Her students were all aware of the virus and nervous about it but thrilled to be interacting in person again.

"They were just so happy to be together," Lockett said. "It was just the best day ever when they were back in school."

The restrictions began to ease in May as the school year wound down and the virus caseload remained stable in Denmark. No one at Lockett's school tested positive for the virus, she said.

This coming school year, class sizes will return to normal, but social distancing and other precautions will still be in place.

Lessons for U.S. Schools: Parents and teachers were anxious about returning to school in April, Lockett said, but the peninsula nation's relatively low number of new cases kept the fear from becoming too overwhelming. She attributes the relative stability of the reopening process, in part, to the country's small size and its universal health care and abundant free child-care options, achieved through some of the highest taxes in any country.

"We're not so worried about how to pay for things as people in the States are," Lockett said.

For teachers, Lockett recommends trying to put on a happy face and be willing to talk about the virus if students want to.

"If they hear adults being really moody and stressed, then they're going to feed off that," she said. "We just tried to do our best with the circumstances to show that things were going to be OK."

How Reopening Worked: Emboldened by a persistent drop in new cases and enthusiasm for restarting the nation's economy, leaders in Israel fully reopened school buildings in May. Children older than 7 are required to wear masks when they're outside the classroom, and children in 4th grade and above are required to wear masks all day, but enforcement has been inconsistent.

But during that first week, one school reported more than 250 students and staff had contracted the virus. The reopening coincided with a heat wave that forced classrooms, already cramped with students in close proximity, to close the windows, reducing ventilation. Close to 250 schools in the country were forced to shut down again after reopening, and experts believe the school reopenings contributed to a " second wave " of COVID-19 cases in the country at large.

On-the-Ground Perspective: On May 17, the day the government reopened schools and urged people to resume daily life outside the home, a 7th grade student at Gymnasia Ha'ivrit high school reported to the school that he had tested positive for COVID-19. One day later, another student tested positive. The number of infections at the school quickly soared to 154 students and 26 staff members, the New York Times reported.

Upon learning of the first case, teachers and students who had come in contact with the infected 7th grader were urged to quarantine. After the second case was confirmed, the school closed. A few teachers were hospitalized, while 60 percent of the students were asymptomatic, according to a report in the European infectious disease journal Eurosurveillance. The most common symptoms were cough, headache, fever, sore throat, and muscle pain.

"There was a general euphoria among the public, a sense that we had dealt with the first wave well and that it was behind us," Danniel Leibovitch, Gymnasia's principal, told the Times. "Of course, that wasn't true."

By the next month, 87 people who had come in contact with students or staff from the school also tested positive, according to the Eurosurveillance report.

Lessons for U.S. Schools: The Eurosurveillance report ends with a blunt set of recommendations: "COVID-19 prevention in schools involves studying in small groups and minimizing student mixing in activities and transportation. Teachers and parents should lead by wearing face masks, hand hygiene, keeping physical distance, etc. School attendance should be avoided at any sign of illness."

Modest numbers of COVID-19 cases in a given community shouldn't prompt schools to relax or abandon precautions. Improving air circulation is also a priority that shouldn't be overlooked amid the partisan battle over school reopenings.

How Reopening Worked: The school year was set to begin in March, but got delayed three months due to the pandemic. The government's plan in June established phases of reopening for different grade levels: high schoolers first, then younger students gradually over the next several weeks. Schools that recorded a new COVID-19 case were required to close once again for cleaning. Teachers were required to enforce requirements including using designated stairways and doors, refraining from hugging, and keeping desks separated. Some schools were forced to close as soon as one day after reopening, due to a confirmed COVID-19 case.

On-the-Ground Perspective: Gyungbuk Girls' High School, located near the center of the country's COVID-19 outbreak, placed red and blue tape on floors, and staff members rehearsed the flow of foot traffic in the school before it reopened, according to an account in the Los Angeles Times. Students were so excited to return to school that some of them quickly violated the social-distancing requirements. "Kids will be kids," principal Nam Young-mok told the Times.

Another school in Korea delayed the lunch period until 1:40 p.m., after classes ended, to prevent students from congregating maskless with each other after eating.

Lessons for U.S. Schools: Bringing students back in smaller groups could soften the blow if a school has to close once again shortly after reopening. Widespread use of masks in the country, as well as widely available COVID-19 tests and contract tracing operations, has helped ease the transition back to in-person schooling.

Even countries that appear to have gotten the virus under control can experience unexpected surges. A few weeks ago, the country reported 113 new infections -the first time that number soared above 100 in four months.

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Reopening Schools During COVID-19: Lessons Learned From Around the World

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Some U.S. schools have already begun the 2020-21 academic year, with thousands more set to launch in the next few weeks. Americans would be well-served to look beyond the country's borders for signs of how school reopenings might go and lessons they might learn.

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Most Big School Districts Aren't Ready to Reopen

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Most Big School Districts Aren't Ready to Reopen

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All but two of the nation's 10 largest districts exceed a key public health threshold, according to a New York Times analysis.

Ann Darby, left, and Rosa Herrera, both science teachers, checked in students on Tuesday before a summer camp at Wylie High School in Wylie, Texas. Credit... LM Otero/Associated Press

As education leaders decide whether to reopen classrooms in the fall amid a raging pandemic, many are looking to a standard generally agreed upon among epidemiologists: To control community spread of the coronavirus, the average daily infection rate among those who are tested should not exceed 5 percent.

But of the nation's 10 largest school districts, only New York City and Chicago appear to have achieved that public health goal, according to a New York Times analysis of city and county-level data.

Some of the biggest districts, like Miami-Dade County in Florida and Clark County, Nev., which includes Las Vegas, are in counties that have recently reported positive test rates more than four times greater than the 5 percent threshold, the data shows.

The alarming spread of the virus has prompted a growing number of districts to announce they would rely on online instruction in the fall. The superintendent of the nation's sixth-largest district, in Broward County, Fla., on Tuesday recommended full-time remote learning despite pressure from the state's governor and President Trump. That followed an announcement on Monday that California's two largest districts, Los Angeles and San Diego, will teach 100 percent online.

"I'm just super frustrated and really disappointed that our nation, our states and our communities have not exercised the discipline that they need in order to get the coronavirus under control," said Robert W. Runcie, the Broward superintendent. "Now the futures of our young people are collateral damage from our inability to take this thing seriously."

In recent days, Nashville, Atlanta, Arlington, Va., and Oakland, Calif., have also announced plans to start the school year remotely.

The broad national move to keep schools shuttered represents a deepening crisis for the nation's tens of millions of schoolchildren, who are already falling behind academically and socially during the pandemic.

The decisions will also require working parents to continue to carry a heavy burden of ad hoc child care and home schooling, which is presenting families with impossible trade-offs.

Many European and Asian nations have been able to reopen schools safely after controlling the spread of the virus using tools such as widespread mask wearing, testing and contact tracing. Some American health experts believe that operating schools may be safer than generally acknowledged, given research suggesting that young children are less likely than adults to either contract the coronavirus or to spread it.

A teacher handed out coursework to students during a June class at Kinugawa Elementary School in Nikko, Japan. Credit... Carl Court/Getty Images

But the fact remains that the United States has failed to control the spread of the coronavirus, making it difficult to apply the reassuring news from abroad. Local and state leaders must now decide on the best course of action between two bad choices: either open school buildings and take the risk that educators, students and parents become ill, or keep them shuttered and hinder the development of tens of millions of children.

"These are like wartime decisions," Mr. Runcie said. "This is literally like sending people into battle, and without appropriate tools."

In the United States, districts are increasingly splitting into three groups: those that plan to teach online only, those that will allow families to choose between in-person and at-home instruction, and those offering a hybrid approach, with students spending some days in classrooms and some learning remotely.

Many large districts fall into the third category, although more are moving into the first as the virus continues to rage in their regions.

The 5 percent positive test rate was not developed specifically for schools, but it has emerged as a metric that many districts are considering when making plans.

The number comes from a general threshold established by public health experts, who say that a positive test rate of less than 10 percent, and ideally under 3 percent, is generally needed to control and suppress the spread of the virus in a community.

The World Health Organization encourages governments to reopen their economies only if their positivity rates are below 5 percent for at least two weeks. But the rate is a reliable indicator only when there is widespread testing, and many states are still not testing enough.

This week, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, a Democrat, announced that schools across the state could only reopen in September if they were in a region where the average daily infection rate was below 5 percent over a two-week period. None of the state's 10 regions currently have an infection rate over 2 percent.

Jim Malatras, an aide to the governor, said the state "wanted to establish an objective number so schools can plan."

Teachers in Orange County, Fla., protested outside the school district's headquarters in Orlando this month, objecting to Gov. Ron DeSantis's efforts to have schools open five days a week. Credit... Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel, via Associated Press

In Florida, which has five of the nation's largest school districts - Miami-Dade, Broward, Hillsborough, Orange and Palm Beach Counties - officials have taken a different approach, aggressively pushing schools to resume operations.

Last week, the state's education commissioner, Richard Corcoran, who was nominated by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, issued an emergency order asking districts to reopen "brick and mortar schools with the full panoply of services."

But fully staffing the Broward school system to maintain social distancing between students and staff members would require at least $230 million in new funding, Mr. Runcie said, because of the need to hire thousands of additional teachers to reduce class sizes to an average of 14 students.

In California, where case numbers have been soaring,reopening schools has become a moving target. Just two and a half weeks ago, when Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed the state budget, it included strong language that discouraged schools from operating exclusively online.

But as cases climbed, concerns about too much online instruction quickly morphed into concerns about too little school safety. California is using the 5 percent positivity threshold as a guideline - one that has grownincreasingly distant in many places. In Los Angeles County, home to the nation's second-largest school district, the positivity rate has averaged 9 percent over the past seven days.

"We had hoped it wouldn't get to this point," said the Los Angeles schools superintendent, Austin Beutner. "All of a sudden, in the middle of June, everything just went through the roof."

The decision by Los Angeles and San Diego to teach online is expected to be influential. Several other large districts in the state, including San Bernardino, Santa Clara and Oakland, will start the year remotely, and this week the public schools in Pasadena and the entirety of Stanislaus County in the Central Valley said they would delay in-person learning at least for the first weeks of August.

Even in Orange County, Calif., where a cluster of conservative officials has aggressively pushed for reopening, larger districts have been hearing from teachers' unions and nervously eyeing the local test positivity rate, which averaged 14.6 percent over the last seven days.

On Monday, the county's Board of Education voted to recommend that schools reopen without social distancing and other precautions. But their recommendation is not binding, and on Tuesday, the Santa Ana Unified School District, the county's second-largest, announced it would pivot from a planned hybrid reopening to distance learning.

"While we hope at some point to have our students attend our schools alongside their classmates and teachers, now is not the time," the superintendent, Jerry Almendarez, said in a statement.

In the Northeast, parents and school leaders face a very different landscape. New York City, the nation's largest district with some 1.1 million students and 1,800 schools, was the center of the country's outbreak this spring. Now the city's average positive test rate hovers around 2 percent - the lowest among the country's largest school districts.

New York City schools plan to offer part-time in-person instruction in the fall. Credit... Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times

That leaves New York virtually alone - with the exception of Chicago, the third-largest district, where the city had a 5 percent positivity rate - in having the virus sufficiently under control to satisfy the public health threshold. Still, New York City will likely offer in-person instruction only one to three days a week when the school year begins in September.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, has made the return to classrooms a priority, but he signaled greater flexibility on Tuesday amid a steep uptick in virus cases. The state's guidelines require districts to offer in-person education five days a week, although parents could choose to have children learn online only.

The Houston Federation of Teachers, a union that represents 6,500 educators, had blasted the state's plan for reopening campuses as "unacceptably vague and hardly adequate." In a letter sent to the school district on Sunday, teachers asked to delay classroom instruction until the area had seen a decline in new cases for at least 14 days and achieved the positive test rate of less than 5 percent. That is far from the current landscape in greater Houston, which in recent days had a positive test rate of 13 percent.

"No one wants to be inside the school building more than teachers," said Maxie Hollingsworth, a math teacher at a Houston elementary school. But Ms. Hollingsworth said she was not comfortable returning to her classroom and risking infection; her daughter has asthma and is at higher risk of complications from the coronavirus.

"The plain truth to me," she said, "is it is immoral to reopen schools without the things we need in place."

Texas officials are closely watching the national landscape, and it is possible they will modify the five-day-a-week requirement. The Houston Independent School District, the nation's seventh largest with 209,000 students, is expected to make an announcement on Wednesday about plans for the academic year.

Rising virus counts in Clark County, Nev., are complicating plans for the nation's fifth-largest district to provide 326,000 students with two days per week of in-person learning.

"The No. 1 aspect is safety," said Linda Cavazos, the vice president of the district's board of trustees. "We may be looking at having to change the entire thing to distance learning."

Nery Martinez, who has two teenage children and was laid off from his job as a bartender at the Caesars Palace casino because of the pandemic, said he preferred online instruction, despite the financial impact that supervising his children's learning would have on his family once he goes back to work.

"Face to face is a lot of risk," he said. "I need to make the money to pay rent, but I want to be here to protect them."

Contributing reporting were Shawn Hubler, Dan Levin, Sarah Mervosh and Mitch Smith.

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Most Big School Districts Aren't Ready to Reopen. Here's Why.

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All but two of the nation's 10 largest districts exceed a key public health threshold, according to a New York Times analysis. As education leaders decide whether to reopen classrooms in the fall amid a raging pandemic, many are looking to a standard generally agreed upon among epidemiologists: To control community spread of the coronavirus, the average daily infection rate among those who are tested should not exceed 5 percent.