If history is any guide, there could have been far more empty seats than usual in New York City schools today.
When past New York sports champions held victory parades, many students skipped school to cheer on the teams. Attendance in the city’s schools plummeted by double digits in the 1990s when parades were held for the Yankees, a period that included three World Series victories and another in 2000.
More than a quarter of the city’s students weren’t in class when the Yankees celebrated their 24th title in October 1998.
This time, after the first N.B.A. championship for the Knicks in 53 years, Mayor Zohran Mamdani encouraged students to stay in school, particularly because it is also the same day as several end-of-year state science exams, known as the Regents. Some students and parents started petitions calling for the exams to be rescheduled, but state education officials declined.
Some parents on Thursday morning said that students who were not headed to the parade but to their schools in Lower Manhattan were having difficulty getting to class because subway service had been suspended at many stations there.
Of course, ticker-tape parades are not school holidays. Still, in 2000, Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was mayor at the time, told students that they should skip school to celebrate the Yankees victory that year — as long as they also wrote a report about it or read a book about baseball.
“You want my advice? Let the kid be part of the parade,” Mr. Giuliani said. (The school board president did not agree: “It is not a vacation day.”)
On average, about 85 to 90 percent of students in New York City show up to class. (It was 89 percent on Wednesday.) At times, the attendance rate has been much lower. It was about 63 percent after a huge snowstorm in February and even lower on some days during the coronavirus pandemic.
What will attendance be on Thursday? The city’s Department of Education will release the day’s attendance numbers on Thursday evening.
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