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Amid a feud with Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Mayor Bill de Blasio stood his ground Monday on keeping city schools closed until the fall, saying he was “quite convinced they will be” kept shuttered to safeguard the health of the students, their teachers and families.
“We’ve made very clear this is about the safety of 1.1 million kids as well as so many parents and family members of hundreds of thousands of educators and school staff,” de Blasio said on WPIX.
“It’s not safe to reopen them and it’s not smart to reopen them. We have to protect against a resurgence of this virus … we have to make sure we don’t take our foot off the gas here and end up regretting it,” Hizzoner added.
The mayor also said the city will be opening five testing centers – in Upper Manhattan, East New York in Brooklyn, Morrisania in The Bronx, Jamaica and in the Vanderbilt Clinic on Staten Island.
On Sunday, the governor said the schools would not reopen until it is safe to do so, but added that it doesn’t mean they’ll remain closed until the fall.
“We’re not going to open any school ’til it is safe from a public-health point of view,” Cuomo said during a news conference in Albany. “Whatever plan we come up with will be driven by data and science.”
The governor earlier said that de Blasio “didn’t close [the schools], and he can’t open them” — adding that he understood the mayor’s position because “he represents New York City.”
Cuomo said he hoped to devise a “coordinated approach” and “get on the same page with New Jersey and Connecticut.”
For his part, de Blasio on Monday said Cuomo “has to think about the whole state, and I respect that. But I am quite certain our schools will remain closed.”
He continued: “I respect the role the governor has to play, the president has to play. They all have different roles to play. My job is to protect the people of my city and that means the kids, the parents, the educators, everyone.”
When asked whether businesses also would remain closed through June, the mayor said he doesn’t “agree that you have to see the schools issue in the prism of the economy … you could start to reopen the economy even if schools are shut. There’s not a direct necessary connection between the two.”
De Blasio also made an urgent call for more testing and slammed the federal government over its response.
“We all know the federal government over months and months has never delivered the amount of testing that this city needs, or any city needs, and they’ve got to use that Defense Production Act and all the tools they have to change that reality,” he said.
“And we’ve never seen that done,” he added.
