All school districts in the state can open, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced Friday.
But before they do, they must talk with parents and teachers, and provide the state with some more information.
"We have the best infection situation in the country. If any state can do it this state can do it," Cuomo said in a conference call with reporters.
But some are questioning if the bar he is setting will be too high for school districts to clear.
The governor said schools must post online their plans on remote learning, Covid-19 testing and contact tracing by the end of next week.
"These three areas are the highly questioned areas, almost across all school districts," Cuomo said.
Frontier Superintendent Richard Hughes did not understand why Cuomo was not coming up with a statewide plan for testing, saying in Twitter: "Yet he does so for every business, gathering, etc. He blamed feds for low testing capacity, proud o fhow NY responded under his 'leadership' but now steps back. Question, why are schools being left to their own? He doesn't want parents and business mad at him for closing schools."
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Saying "no one size fits all," Cuomo said the issues have to be addressed district by district. That point was echoed by Philip Rumore, president of the Buffalo Teachers Federation.
“The bottom line is this,” he said. “When it comes to Buffalo, the decision of whether to go back or not go back is a decision that should be made jointly by parents, teachers and school staff as to whether the plan is safe for everybody and academically sound.”
The plans about remote learning, if a district plans to undertake it, should address the issue of equity, Cuomo said.
No interscholastic sports have been approved yet by the state.
The governor also said districts must hold at least three public sessions before Aug. 21 to discuss plans with parents. The sessions may be online.
Buffalo Public Schools, because of its size, must hold at least five sessions.
Schools should also have one session just for teachers, he said.
The state will require masks be worn inside schools at all times when social distancing is not possible, and districts must provide masks for anyone who doesn't have one.
No district or school will be allowed to open if the state Department of Health has not signed off on its reopening plan.
As of Friday, 127 of the state's 749 districts had yet to submit a reopening plan. There were 50 more plans that were submitted that are considered incomplete, Cuomo said. The state will notify districts on Monday if their submitted plans are considered deficient, he said.
Cuomo's long-awaited announcement comes after school districts and private schools were required to submit reopening plans to the state for review by last Friday.
If they were given the go-ahead to have classes in person, most public school districts planned to offer a hybrid model of in-person and remote learning to allow for social distancing in the school buildings.
Cuomo has said that in order for schools to reopen, a region must be in phase four of reopening and that the region's infection rate has to be 5% or lower, based on a 14-day average. If the rate rose greater than 9% based on a seven-day average in a region, schools there would close, he announced last month.
By those measures, Western New York schools met the threshold weeks ago.
“By our infection rate, all school districts can open everywhere in the state. Every region is below the thresholds we’ve established, which is great news," he said.
The governor ordered all schools in the state closed in mid-March, and they remained closed for the rest of the school year. They moved to remote teaching, with varying degrees of success. School sporting events and class trips were canceled, and graduations, if they took place at all, occurred throughout the summer, either at drive-ins, individually at school auditoriums or with students spread out on football fields.
The governor has previously indicated that he supports parents' right to keep their children home if they don't feel that it's safe to send them back to school.
"If the teachers say 'I'm not coming back' or the parents say 'I'm not sending my child,' then whatever the school district says is irrelevant," Cuomo said Thursday.
Across the state, somewhere around 10% of families are saying they do not plan to send their children back to school in the fall, according to the New York State School Boards Association.
