Picking Up The Pieces

By Cara Eisenpress
Published in Crain’s New York Business on May 30, 2022

These days, walking the hallways of The Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem, Principal Colleen McGeehan overhears conversations in classrooms and catches snippets of the routines students use to learn vocabulary.

“It sounds like a school,” McGeehan said. “That’s what I was missing.”

The climate at the public, all-girls Leadership School and at many other learning institutions around the city now feels promising for the most part, educators and parents told Crain’s. The return of school life from classrooms to extracurriculars has been hard-won in New York City, after many Covid-related rules ended in March, though some linger.

Restoring a sense of normalcy might be the most important action to regain the rigor and community at schools, educators and parents say. The loss for kids during the Covid-19 pandemic has been broad, including lagging social and academic skills as well as a dearth of meaningful and serendipitous experiences.