As Coronavirus cases surge, New York City shuts down Schools

 

New York city will temporarily close all schools for in-person learning beginning Thursday, after showing the country – at least for eight weeks – that a big city school district could safely welcome students back to their classrooms.

The city had been flirting with a seven-day average positivity rate of 3%, the threshold that triggers a stoppage of in-person instruction in schools city-wide based on the school reopening agreement city officials brokered with the city's teachers and principals unions.

"The city has now reached this threshold of test positivity citywide and, as a result, the [New York City Department of Education] will temporarily close down all public school buildings for in-person learning," New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza wrote in a letter to principals Wednesday. "This action, along with other city-wide measures, is a key component to address the concerning rise in COVID-19 transmission rates."

The closing of the country's largest school system, which serves more than 1 million students, is a huge blow to what was becoming one of the biggest – and one of the only – success stories among big city school districts fighting to safely reopen schools for in-person instruction amid an unrelenting pandemic.

Despite contentious debates between Mayor Bill de Blasio, union officials and parents over the summer, and several reopening delays, New York City was the only big city to welcome students back for in-person learning. The school closures will most significantly impact the approximately 280,000 students who are learning through the city's hybrid model, which has them in schools two to three days a week and learning virtually the other days. Other students have been learning virtually.

In recent days, the mayor has been under fire for the city's conservative positivity rate threshold of 3%. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization recommend schools close if positivity rates go above 5%, but with lack of clear guidance at the federal level, states and school districts set their own standards – some comfortable with allowing positivity rates to go upwards of 20%. New York state set its threshold for closure using a 9% positivity rate, but New York City uses its own, lower threshold based on de Blasio's negotiations with the city's teachers and principals unions.

"We established this threshold because of our commitment to health and safety for all of our community above and beyond everything else," Carranza wrote.

The outcry from parents increased this week as it became clear that the infection rates inside schools aren't on the rise the way they are city-wide. The average positivity rate among the city's schools is less than 0.2%, based on the 112,000 most recent tests conducted randomly among students and teachers.

That findings mirrors mounting evidence that while COVID-19 infections can and do occur inside schools, schools are not the main drivers of increased infection rates. The data isn't perfect or as robust as public health officials would like, but that narrative is taking hold with more certainty – though schools do appear to be bearing the brunt of the community spikes as some localities allow bars and restaurants to remain open for in-person dining as they also consider shuttering school buildings.

New York City is far from the only district making the difficult decision to halt in-person learning as coronavirus infection rates surge across the country.

The closures are occurring against a backdrop of children contracting the virus at alarming rates. As it stands, more than 1 million children in the U.S. have been infected with COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association. And in the one-week period ending Nov. 12, officials recorded nearly 112,000 new cases in children – substantially larger than any previous week in the pandemic, the groups said.

Several major questions remain now that the city has temporarily closed in-person learning, including what exact threshold would be required to reopen and whether that reopening would look any different than it does now.

"This closure is temporary," Carranza wrote in an email to principals. "We will work diligently alongside other city agencies and every New Yorker to bring this transmission rate back down and get back to in-person learning as quickly and as safely as possible."