NEW YORK — For months, as New York City struggled to start part-time, in-person classes, fear grew that its 1,800 public schools would become vectors of coronavirus infection, a citywide archipelago of super-spreader sites.
New York City is facing fears of a second wave of the virus brought on by localized spikes in Brooklyn and Queens, which have required new shutdown restrictions that included the closure of more than 120 public schools as a precaution, even though few people in them have tested positive. Story continuesSince then, large school districts across Florida have opened for in-person learning, too. Some wealthier districts in the New York suburbs declined to take this step, worried that it was too risky and logistically challenging.
While public health experts said the data was encouraging, they also cautioned that it was still early. The city’s new schools testing regimen, which began Oct. 9, calls for 10% to 20% of the school population to be tested once a month, depending on the size of the school. The city is applying this testing to its 1,600 traditional public schools; the city’s 260 charter schools are not included.
A positive test of a student or teacher causes the city to spring into action. Under the rules, one case can cause the closure of a classroom. Two or more cases in separate parts of the same school can prompt a temporary schoolwide closure. At least 25 schools have temporarily closed since classes began. But only three were closed as of Friday.
So far, only about 72,000 parents have returned consent forms, the school’s chancellor, Richard A. Carranza, said at a City Council hearing Friday. That is out of about 500,000 children who are attending in-person classes at least one day a week. “One of the lessons that has come out of analyses in the U.K., Germany and Australia,” he said, “is that adults are at higher risk of potentially introducing infection into a school.”
In Brooklyn, Public School 116, an elementary school, closed for three days after three teachers and a student tested positive.