NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks spoke with 1010 WINS on Friday about what to expect as students return to classes on Sept. 8. It will be the fourth academic year impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but school life is expected to be mostly back to normal.
COVID-19 PANDEMIC
“We’re feeling really good. We went over the last couple of years through a major challenge for so many of our kids. But we feel very optimistic about how things are going. We’ve got more of our kids returning to schools, extremely hopeful and optimistic about the school year. We have as relates to the vaccinations, we continue to encourage all kids to get vaccinated. We think it’s one of the big things that’s taken us successfully through this pandemic. But students won’t have to be mandated to wear masks going forward, and I know that’s something they’re very excited about.”
NO COVID VAX MANDATE IN SCHOOLS
“We’re guided by the science and the regulations from the Department of Health. All the research has shown us that kids are really, really safe in schools. COVID is lowest in schools. It’s lower in schools than it is in our own communities and neighborhoods, and I think that’s because of all the precautions we’ve taken over the past couple of years. And really the safest place to be is in our schools.”
MONKEYPOX
“[We have] no real worry about it. Again, all the research and the guidance that we’re getting is saying that monkeypox for students from kindergarten all the way to 12th grade, extremely low. We’ve put out some guidance around it. But at this present time, we don’t see monkeypox as something that’s a major issue for us. But again, we’ll be paying very close attention to the science, and we will provide the proper guidance to all of our families accordingly.”
NUMBER OF TEACHERS, SUBS
“We always have challenges in certain areas, right? We always have a challenge in getting enough teachers in special education or bilingual teachers. That always remains a challenge for us, but it’s not a bigger challenge than it’s historically been. We feel really good. We hear about a lot of teacher shortages around the nation, but in New York City, we’re in really good shape.”
CLASS SIZES
“We’ve lost about 120,000 families in our schools over the last five years. So class size is not a major issue. It is in certain areas, in certain schools. But across the entire city, class size has dropped during the last five years. So we feel really good about it. There’s some legislation that [Gov. Kathy Hochul] may be signing into law really soon mandating the lowering of class size. So I think our families should listen out for that announcement in the coming days.”
NATIONWIDE PANDEMIC LEARNING LOSS
“I think it just re-emphasized everything that we already knew. That this pandemic has taken a tremendous toll on our kids—not only socially and emotionally, but certainly academically. We’ve got a lot of work we’ve got to do. We’ve got to intensify our efforts. We had a great Summer Rising program this year. We had about 110,000 students who were back in school for a great part of the summer, really working toward helping with that academic loss. We’re going to continue those efforts throughout the school year.”
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