Bill de Blasio
Bill de BlasioReuters

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the city's schools would be reopening for students in pre-school to 5th grade on Dec. 7th. The decision comes two weeks after the mayor said he would keep the school system closed due to a coronavirus spike in the city.

According to a Fox News report, De Blasio said that, "A lot of people have been saying, rightfully, a lot of parents, we've heard your voices loud and clear: you wanted schools back open, but we're going to ask everyone to be a part of that, everyone to participate to make it work," and tweeted that, "wherever possible we will move to 5-day a week in-person learning."

Parents of schoolchildren enrolled in New York-area public schools had been up-in-arms over the mayor's refusal to open the city's educational services despite allowing private institutions to remain open. De Blasio has been embroiled in a number of disputes over coronavirus sanctions including his demands that New York religious institutions be shut down despite his own participation in Black Lives Matter protests in the city.

Last Wednesday, the mayor said New York's public schools would close temporarily in the wake of the rise in coronavirus cases.

De Blasio said city schools would shut down beginning Thursday "out an abundance of caution" after the city recorded a seven-day average positivity rate of three percent, according to an AFP report.

"We must fight back the second wave of COVID-19," he wrote on Twitter at the time.

The three percent threshold had been agreed between the city government and teaching unions when New York's schools began reopening in September.

New York City is the largest school district in the United States with 1.1 million students. It has been the only major city in the United States to commit to offering in-person classes this fall as part of a hybrid system that included online learning.

The US death rate has been accelerating in recent weeks as cases have been surging across the country.