New York City will reopen elementary schools on December 7 and offer in-person classes for special-needs students of all ages despite a recent surge in COVID-19 cases, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Sunday.

The mayor and Schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza also set out a plan to safely reopen school buildings for in-person instruction with more rigorous testing protocols in place as the city is striving to recover from the raging pandemic.

"Reopening our NYC Schools buildings is paramount to recovering from COVID19. Today we can announce that we plan to reopen buildings for: 3-K, Pre-K and grades K-5 on Monday, December 7; District 75 schools at all grade levels on Thursday, December 10," de Blasio tweeted.

"Upon reopening, weekly COVID19 testing will be in effect and testing consent forms will be required for our students to return," said de Blasio, adding, "Finally, as we reopen, wherever possible we will move to 5 day a week in-person learning. We want our kids in the classroom for as much time as possible. Our families do, too."

With many parents struggling to care for their children at home and with data showing the virus largely spares young children, the city will abandon the 3 percent test positivity threshold that it had adopted for closing the school system, the largest in the country, with 1.1 million children.

The new plan aims to give most parents the option of sending their children to school five days a week, which would effectively end the so-called hybrid learning system, the mayor added.

"Whatever happens ahead, we want this to be the plan going forward," de Blasio told a news conference. "We know what we didn't know over the summer, we know what works from actual experience."

Middle and high schools will remain closed, said the mayor, signaling that he would overhaul how the city manages schools during the pandemic, which has forced millions of children in the United States out of school and is widely perceived to have done significant damage to their educations and mental health.

As of Saturday evening, coronavirus deaths added up to 24,260 and confirmed cases to 307,181 in New York City, according to The City, a project that tracks the spread of confirmed COVID-19 infections and fatalities based on information provided by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the governor's office, The COVID Tracking Project and the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.