The following email was sent on Sunday, Nov. 22, from UFT President Michael Mulgrew to public school parents and caregivers who receive communications from the UFT.

Dear Caregiver,

It has been a challenging year for everyone — but particularly for parents and caregivers of school-age children. The temporary suspension of in-person instruction has left many of you in the lurch. And it is disheartening for all of us to see our school buildings close after all the hard work we put into reopening them safely.

But that reopening was in part based on a promise to parents and educators that all school buildings would temporarily close when 3% of the city’s COVID-19 tests were positive over a seven-day average. In-person instruction will resume as soon as the numbers indicate it is safe to do so because we know that our students, particularly our youngest students, learn best in person.

The union supported reopening school buildings in New York City when every other large school system was staying fully remote. But we insisted that stringent safety and health protocols be in place to protect our students and staff.

Thanks to our advocacy, every New York City public school must adhere to a 50-point safety plan including the availability of masks and face shields, effective ventilation, strict social-distancing protocols and daily deep cleanings. On the recommendation of independent medical experts, we also demanded that the city implement a random testing program of staff and students to pick up asymptomatic cases.

Our work paid off. City schools became among the safest public places in the city thanks to those stringent protocols. But the recent increase in community transmission in New York City was making inroads into our schools. Just in the past few weeks, the number of New York City school buildings that closed due to multiple unrelated positive cases has doubled. New York City must flatten the curve, so we never repeat what happened in the spring.

Back in the summer, we had suggested dividing the city into zones, so only areas of the city at or above the 3% rate would need to go remote, but the mayor wanted the 3% threshold to be a citywide trigger. As the conversation now shifts to how to reopen our school buildings safely, we are going to ask the mayor to reconsider a regional approach. We don’t think the whole system has to go remote if large areas of the city have kept transmission rates low.

We take seriously our role as guardians of the safety and well-being of our school communities. Just as we forced the mayor to adopt the most stringent safeguards of any school system in the country, we will continue to prod the DOE until all students have WiFi-enabled devices and access to the tech support they need to learn from home. And we will advocate for our schools to reopen as soon as it is safe to do so.

I want to thank you for everything you have done to support your children’s learning during this extraordinary moment in our nation’s history. We are all in this together. We face a lot of hard decisions in the coming days, but you have my solemn promise that the UFT will continue to work for the greater good of our school communities.

Sincerely,

UFT President Michael Mulgrew