De Blasio announced that move last week after the city’s COVID positivity rate hit 3.0%, the threshold the city uses to trigger a schools shutdown.
Since then, the mayor has been questioned several times about his lack of a plan, but until Wednesday he had not clearly articulated any desire for a do-over.
“Honestly, I have to hold myself responsible. The better situation would have been clearly to have that plan all worked through in advance,” de Blasio said at his morning press briefing Wednesday. “We didn’t have a Plan B, and we should have had a Plan B, but I also understand why we didn’t.”
As the city approached the 3% threshold in the run-up to last week’s closure order, it spent “tons” of energy on averting closures and answering questions about the in-person and remote learning models in place for public school kids, Hizzoner continued.
“We had a moving target. We were trying to see if there were measures we could take to avoid ever going past the 3 percent,’ he said. “That’s really where our energy was going.”
Councilman Mark Treyger, the head of the body’s Education Committee, countered that he offered de Blasio’s team a re-opening plan in July, but was ignored.
“He chose not to have an alternate plan,” Treyger said. “They knew. I don’t think this is the best New York City can do. It’s not the best he can do.”