New York City public schools will reopen Tuesday after nearly 375,000 students participated in remote learning Monday as the city dug its way out of nearly a foot of snow, Mayor Mamdani said. Close to 80% of young students successfully logged into online classrooms during the remote school day, acc ording to preliminary attendance data. High school students and some sixth through eighth graders had the day off due to previously scheduled professional development programming. “Thanks to the round-the-clock work of our schools facilities teams, we are ready to welcome students and staff back to classrooms tomorrow,” Mamdani said in a statement Monday afternoon. The snowstorm marked an early major operational test for Mamdani and his schools chancellor, Kamar Samuels. During a 2024 snowstorm, the schools’ online systems buckled under the stress of hundreds of thousands of students attempting to log online at the same time, as then-Chancellor David Banks blasted the vendor as “not ready for prime time.” To prepare schools to reopen Tuesday, some 8,000 school staff joined sanitation workers in spreading salt, deploying plows and shoveling on Monday, Mamdani and Samuels said during a morning briefing at City Hall. Earlier in the day, the mayor and chancellor dropped into an online classrooms and read the book “The Snowy Day.” “I also logged on with my own daughter before I left home,” Samuels said at the news conference. “And so, I was pleased to announce that both times we were able to log on — like most of the rest of the city — to our classrooms.” Kimberly Villafane, a kindergarten teacher at P.S. 284 in Brownsville, Brooklyn, said her school started distributing laptops last November. By Friday, administrators contacted the remaining families, and were able to distribute the final devices in time for the storm. On Sunday, the P.S. 284 principal offered two hours of non-mandatory overtime for staff to plan. Villafane adapted her phonics lesson as an online presentation, with call-and-response activities, a couple of games, and “movement breaks.” Villafane’s class had some issues with Google Classroom, but the school was ready with direct links to the online meetings and able to get 14 of her 16 students online. At least one family didn’t attend for reasons unrelated to the remote day. “We were able to meet the children online,” Villafane said. United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew echoed Villafane’s concerns, but overall considered the remote school day a success. “Mayor Mamdani gets an A for his first snow day,” Mulgrew said in a statement to the Daily News. “The one glitch seemed to be Google … They need to do better.” Reps for the school system acknowledged snags on Monday with Google Classroom, but said they worked with Google leadership to quickly resolve the issue. Overall, the number of support requests to the systemwide help desk were “in line” with an average school day. “Preparation matters,” spokeswoman Nicole Brownstein said in a statement. “We are proud to share that we experienced only minor hiccups with remote logins.” ...read more read less