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The Mount Vernon City School District said it plans to reopen for in-person learning on Tuesday, Jan. 18. The district had switched to 100-percent virtual instruction on Wednesday, Dec. 22.
Two other city districts in Westchester County -- New Rochelle and Yonkers Public School District have both also announced they will be closed this week for in-person learning.
Both districts say they are switching to virtual learning for one week, starting on Monday, Jan. 3.
New Rochelle Schools Superintendent Jonathan Raymond said the decision was driven by "rapidly increasing COVID-19 infection and transmission rates.
He said the district is "monitoring health conditions with the intention to reopen school Buildings" on Monday, Jan. 10.
Earlier this week, a pediatrician who is an expert on disease and vaccine development sounded the alarm about the ability of schools to resume in-person learning during the height of the new wave of the COVID-19 pandemic sparked by a surge of cases from the highly contagious Omicron variant.
"Here's the problem," Hotez said in an interview on MSNBC Wednesday morning, Dec. 29. "We're kind of going off old information what it's been like for the previous variants, the previous lineages.
"Omicron's a different animal. Omicron is so highly transmissible at a level of transmissibility around the level potentially of measles, which is the most transmissible common virus agent we know."
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