New York City schools reopened Tuesday after a storm dumped two feet of snow on the city, and the results were about as ugly as you'd expect. Just 63% of students showed up.
The New York Post reported that roughly 12,000 of the city's 78,300 teachers called off. Around 75% of city schools had fewer than half their students in attendance. Two schools, Concord High and Research and Service High, reported less than 15% attendance.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani spent the day defending his decision not to call a second snow day or switch to remote learning, arguing that the city's Department of Education simply wasn't ready.
"With students coming back from mid-winter break, it was not possible to ensure that enough students had the devices they needed to effectively participate in remote learning."
That's the mayor of the largest school system in the country, explaining that after years of pandemic-era remote learning infrastructure investments, New York City still can't get laptops to kids.
Nearly 900,000 children attend the city's public schools. The system had an entire winter break to prepare. And yet when the moment arrived, the city's answer was: we don't have enough devices.
Staten Island took 29 inches of snow on its east shore. One Staten Island high school had 180 staff members out. Councilman Frank Morano, a Republican representing the borough, said multiple schools reported just 15% to 20% student attendance and posed the obvious question:
"What is the possible educational value of opening schools today?"
Morano relayed that one principal told him remote education would have yielded 96% attendance. Instead, kids who couldn't physically reach their schools got nothing.
Teachers who tried fared little better. One teacher, who lives just ten blocks from her school, described falling twice on the way in, scraping her knee and hurting her ankle. She made the point plainly:
"In my opinion, there was no reason not to be remote today if you trust your teachers and students and believe in them to do the right thing."
Sanitation officials acknowledged the scale of the problem. Acting Commissioner Javier Logan said resources were being shifted to Staten Island but described the clearing effort as something he'd never encountered in 27 years on the job.
City workers cleared thousands of unshoveled sidewalks that sanitation representatives said were technically private property owners' responsibility. Garbage collection won't return to normal until Monday.
That's the backdrop against which Mamdani told families to send their children to school.
The criticism wasn't partisan. It was universal. City Council Minority Leader David Carr, a Staten Island Republican, called the reopening what it was:
"Today should have been another snow day or a remote learning day. Everyone is having a hard time, but there are many teachers who can't make it in today as well as students. Parking is practically nonexistent for faculty and staff because the plowing inevitably covers curbside spots on our roads."
Republican Councilwoman Joann Ariola of Queens reported her office was flooded with complaints from teachers who couldn't find parking and staff who couldn't enter buildings because of snow buildup. Her assessment was blunt:
"They really should have had a remote day, to give the city time to get things cleared out near our schools. That didn't happen, and now we have this mess today, confirming all of the things we all knew were going to take place."
Democrats joined in. Councilwoman Kayla Santosuosso, whose district covers southern Brooklyn, said teachers reported more student absences than substitutes who showed up. Councilwoman Shahana Hanif posted images of a snowy subway station and an uncleared school entrance, asking the question the mayor apparently never considered:
"Okay, schools are open and I know parents are relieved but is/was there a plan to ensure sidewalks and entrances were fully cleared so students can safely walk into the building without slipping?"
Even Council Speaker Julie Menin, a Manhattan Democrat, gently acknowledged that "having some kind of flexibility is very, very important for parents in these tough storms." When your own party's speaker is publicly nudging you toward common sense, you've already lost the argument.
Perhaps the most telling detail: Mamdani announced Monday's snow day in a video alongside Victoria Mompoint, a 14-year-old eighth grader. By Tuesday, Mompoint told Gothamist that people were texting her on Instagram asking if she could call the mayor back. A middle schooler had become the city's most effective snow day advocate.
Mompoint framed the problem better than anyone in City Hall:
"It's not even like kids don't want to go to school — kids don't want to wait for a bus that's going to take probably 30 minutes plus and climb over mountains of snow, and it's probably not possible that all the snow is going to be cleaned off by the time that kids have to go to school tomorrow morning."
Mamdani's stated rationale for forcing schools open leaned heavily on the idea that schools serve as social infrastructure, not just educational institutions. He argued that in-person schooling provides meals, mental health support, and childcare for working parents.
That framing does real rhetorical work. It also reveals something conservatives have pointed out for years: the public school system has been loaded with so many non-educational missions that it can no longer fulfill its primary one competently.
When your justification for opening schools isn't "children need to learn" but "children need warm meals and mental health services," you're describing a welfare distribution center, not a school. And when 37% of students don't show up anyway, even that justification collapses. The kids who most needed those services were likely the ones who couldn't get through the snow.
The device excuse is equally damning. New York City spent billions during COVID preparing for remote learning. If those systems are now so degraded that a single snow day can't be converted to remote instruction without a week's notice, that's not a weather problem.
That's a management problem. A Change.org petition calling for remote learning options drew 172,000 signatures. Parents wanted it. Teachers wanted it. Principals said it would have worked. The city said no because the bureaucracy wasn't ready.
Hanging over all of this is New York's 180-day school requirement. The state department of education granted a waiver for Monday's snow day, tied to Governor Kathy Hochul's state of emergency declaration.
That waiver covered only Monday. Schools could apply for waivers for additional days under state guidance, but the city apparently decided the paperwork wasn't worth the effort. Better to send kids climbing over snowbanks than to navigate a bureaucratic process.
The normal attendance rate for New York City schools runs between 88% and 92%. Tuesday's 63% represents a collapse. And that citywide average masks the reality in the hardest-hit boroughs, where some schools were functionally empty.
The city tapped 5,000 substitutes to cover the 12,000 teachers who called out, meaning roughly 15% of the teaching force was absent and the coverage was less than half what was needed.
So schools were open. Students largely weren't there. Teachers largely weren't there. Substitutes couldn't fill the gap. Sidewalks weren't cleared. Parking didn't exist. And the mayor's defense was that children need warm meals.
New York City didn't open schools Tuesday because it was the right call. It opened them because the system is too rigid, too poorly managed, and too dependent on physical presence to do anything else. That's not compassion. That's institutional failure wearing compassion's clothes.
