Faced with a blizzard of criticism from angry parents forced to trudge with their kids to school through a nor’easter that dumped up to three inches of snow an hour on the Big Apple, a seemingly out-of-touch Chancellor Carmen Fariña defended the call to keep classes open Thursday — blindly declaring it “a beautiful day out there” as wet flakes and freezing rain continued to pelt New Yorkers.
Fariña and her head-in-a-snowdrift boss, Mayor de Blasio, scrambled to explain why school buses were rolling and kids sliding through the blinding storm, with Hizzoner trying to pin the blame on the National Weather Service for not providing a more precise inch count the night before, and insinuating the agency had low-balled its forecast.
“It has totally stopped snowing. It’s absolutely a beautiful day out there right now,” Fariña said during a Thursday-morning news conference with de Blasio, a mere 45 minutes after Gov. Cuomo declared a state of emergency for the city and its suburbs.
“It’s getting warmer, which means that, theoretically, the snow will start melting,” Fariña said as the jaws of reporters in attendance and parents across the city collectively dropped.
De Blasio and Farina defended their call to keep schools open, made at 10:30 Wednesday night, as weather forecasts predicted a severe winter storm with six 6 to 10 inches of snow for the city.
“Unlike some cities, we don’t shut down in the face of adversity. I’m going to make decisions based on the information we have,” Hizzoner said, insisting, “We made the right decision.”
Fariña also announced that kids who did not show up would be officially marked as absent, saying, “At the course of a whole day, you can still get to school.”
Meanwhile, less than two hours after kids and parents made the treacherous trek to school, Fariña canceled all after-school activities because of the bad weather.
She also pulled the plug on a town-hall meeting that would have brought her to Brooklyn on Thursday night, citing “inclement weather.”
Other city officials didn’t buy the de Blasio-Fariña snow job.
Even City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, a close de Blasio ally, said schools should have been shuttered, noting, “Closing schools is a very difficult and serious decision to make, and I believe in this instance it was warranted.”
Another mayoral ally, teachers- union chief Michael Mulgrew, said staying open was a “mistake,” and Public Advocate Letitia James called for a re-evaluation of the school-closing process.
De Blasio and Fariña’s face-saving effort came as:
— New York weather guru Al Roker, whose daughter goes to a city public school, ripped into de Blasio from the Sochi Olympics, in a series of Twitter postings over the botched call.
— School buses slid through slippery streets, sparking outrage from white-knuckled drivers and parents, who noted that de Blasio’s “stay off the roads” mandate to residents conflicted with the order for kids to get to school
— Kids and teachers who did make it to school said classrooms were practically empty, and they spent the day watching movies and doing busy work but no schoolwork.
— A high-school student got more than 30,000 “likes’’ with a Facebook page urging the mayor and chancellor to rethink sending kids to school in snowstorms.
In the end, only 44.65 percent of students came to class, compared with a 90 percent on an average school day, according to the city’s Department of Education.
More than 165 schools reported attendance rates of 25 percent or less. PS 35 on Staten Island, where most kids depend on buses or car rides, had a mere 11 percent of students show up.
At the press conference, de Blasio insisted he made the right call, and seemed to buck the science behind weather forecasting, saying, “There is the illusion you can have perfect information and perfect decisions.”
“We don’t second-guess the National Weather Service,” he declared, before proceeding to do just that. “The low end of their estimate suggested that by the time kids were walking in the door of schools, there might have been two or three inches of snow,” he said.
“That was not an overwhelming figure from our point of view. The high-end figure was more problematic — but not enough to close school.”
De Blasio said he needs a “guaranteed” foot of snow on the ground by dawn to shut things down. “If you guaranteed me a foot of snow between midnight and 6 a.m., I guarantee you schools would be closed,” he said.
Fariña admitted to reporters that “dangerous conditions” existed by 7 a.m., but that apparently didn’t change her mind.
“Today” show weatherman Roker was incensed, tweeting, “Talk about a bad prediction. Long range DiBlasio [sic] forecast: 1 term” and “@NYCMayorsOffice says snow was faster/heavier than expected. No, Mr. Mayor. It came as predicted. Don’t blame weather for YOUR poor policy.”
In response, de Blasio retorted, “It’s a different thing to run a city than to give the weather on TV.”
“How dare @NYCMayorsOffice @NYCSchools throw NWS under the school bus. Forecast was on time and on the money,” Roker later added.
Additional reporting by Lia Eustachewich, Lorena Mongelli and Amber Sutherland