The airlessness of lockdown as a family has been replaced with uncomfortable proximity to 8.5 million people
More than 1 million kids went back to school in New York this week. In the largest school district in the US, the return looked, from a distance, vaguely normal. For a year, children in the city who had opted for in-person learning – a mere 350,000 – had experienced a weird version of school, with some classes on Zoom and the vast majority of their classmates still learning remotely. In my children’s first-grade class there were fewer than 15 kids in attendance. Compared with full shutdown, it was a luxury, of course. But it was still an unnerving, pared-down experience.
This Monday, the scene at the school gate felt like the resumption of a life many of us had forgotten how to lead. Before the summer break, Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York, announced that in September remote learning options would be retired; the entire student body – with the exception of kids with particular health needs – would be required to turn up in person. This was a good thing, putting an end to the split resources and scheduling nightmares of hybrid learning. It was also a shock. That first morning, parents, still prohibited from entering school buildings, lined up around the block to drop their children off at the gates. School buses, back up to capacity, stood bumper to bumper. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of public-sector workers in New York, ordered to return to in-person work, resumed the daily commute. The feeling was of an entire city on the move.