Are you kidding?

The new academic year’s fourth week has just ended, yet America’s largest public school system still refuses to report the number of students in attendance. Preliminary numbers are promised at the end of the month, supposedly earlier than ever before, and that the public should be grateful for getting that much data that quickly. Really?

Every weekday, the Department of Education delivers, and Mayor de Blasio boasts about the attendance rate — 87% on Thursday — without any numerator or denominator. Is that 87% of 1.1 million students, the pre-COVID tally? Is it 87% of last year’s 960,000, which included more than 600,000 fully remote learners? Or 87% of a much smaller number? The first week of school, the DOE told us it was too early because too many families were still settling in. While there may be some volatility, it’s been a month.

Meanwhile, only Wednesday did educrats reveal the number of kids whose parents have let them get COVID tests — a critical data piece of information, since a random 10% is swabbed weekly, with results triggering partial and full classroom closures. Of roughly a half-million elementary-age students, just 192,705 have signed forms — meaning we’re getting a very incomplete picture of COVID inside schools.

While we’re on the subject, last week came news that only about 300 medically vulnerable kiddos are getting at-home learning (there’s no remote option anymore, just limited at-home instruction for at-risk kids who qualify). That’s a tiny fraction of the 3,0005,000 Schools Chancellor Meisha Porter expected. Why have these 300 been getting just an hour a day of instruction, far less than what remote learning provided last year? The DOE says it’s rolling out longer-day, small-group instruction for some of these youngsters. Why only now, and why can’t kids get one-on-one for more than an hour a day?

The City Council is mulling bills by Mark Treyger demanding the DOE publish basic indicators. If the mayor signs it, it won’t take effect for another 30 days. New Yorkers deserve the truth now. It’s embarrassing we even have to say this.