Eric Adams’s First Big Task as Mayor: Reopening Schools in the New Year

On Thursday morning, New York City’s students filed into their classrooms one last time before winter break, at the end of what was by far the most disrupted and chaotic week of the fall semester.

Perhaps the most pressing question for the incoming mayor, Eric Adams, is exactly how those nearly one million children and roughly 75,000 teachers will return on Jan. 3 for the start of the spring semester — just two days after Mr. Adams will be sworn in.

Children and staff members are set to head back to 1,600 schools across the city against the backdrop of a dramatic rise in virus cases driven by the Omicron variant, a surge that city officials have said will almost certainly worsen over the next few weeks.

Mr. Adams has said he does not support large-scale shutdowns. “We can’t close down the city anytime a new variant comes up,” he said this week. He has also said in the past that he would support a vaccine mandate for eligible students.

A spokesman for Mr. Adams declined to comment on his specific plans for schools, citing ongoing discussions with his team. But Mr. Adams and the incoming schools chancellor, David C. Banks, are weighing a variety of options.

Mr. Banks has been in touch with union officials and other education leaders in recent days, according to several people with knowledge of those talks, to discuss testing and staffing issues that can be addressed before the next semester begins.

Rising cases in schools have caused more disruption in the past week in New York than at any other time this school year.

Eleven schools were temporarily closed because of confirmed coronavirus cases as of Wednesday evening, more than half of the 17 total schools that have been closed at any point during the semester. More than 420 of the city’s roughly 65,000 classrooms are being kept empty on Thursday because of exposures.

Two of the schools currently closed are part of the Eagle Academy network, the all-boys public schools that Mr. Banks founded in 2004. In a recent interview, Mr. Banks spoke about the profound isolation that Eagle students experienced during school shutdowns.

The city’s tracing system for school cases, known as the situation room, is also buckling under the rapid rise in infections among staff and students, educators and union officials said.

In interviews, public health experts, union officials and educators said the relative success of New York’s school reopening so far has made it even more crucial that parents and educators not lose confidence in reopening at this stage of the pandemic.

They also agreed that Mr. Adams would have to take action to avoid the kind of outbreak that the school system has avoided since it first partially reopened in the fall of 2020.

“It’s on everyone’s radar that something needs to be done,” said Mark Cannizzaro, president of the city’s principals’ union. “This is an opportunity for the new administration. They’re going to instill a heck of a lot of confidence in people if they put procedures in place that run smoothly.”

Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, warned Mr. Adams on Wednesday that the union might change its support for keeping schools…