Schools will fully reopen post-holiday, officials pledge
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Teachers protest with signs calling for increased COVID-19 testing, outside P.S. 64 Earth School Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021, in New York. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a plan to increase testing on Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2021.
AP Photo/Brittainy Newman, File
By Jacob Kaye
Mayor Bill de Blasio, Mayor-elect Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul teamed up Tuesday to lay out their plan to keep schools open amid the spike in COVID-19 cases throughout the five boroughs.
The “Stay Safe, Stay Open” plan aims to provide fewer interruptions to public school classrooms in New York City, according to the officials, by easing the guidelines for quarantining children after an exposure to the virus and by boosting the school system’s ability to test for COVID-19.
In addition to doubling the New York City school system’s testing capacity, the plan, which will go into effect when students return from the holiday break in January, marks a major change in pandemic policy.
Previously, if a student tested positive, the entire classroom would be sent home to learn online. Under the new policy, if a student tests positive for COVID-19, their classmates will be sent home with at-home tests. Students who test negative will be allowed to return to the classroom in-person the next day. Those same students will also be sent home with a second test 7-days after the initial exposure.
“Our kids need to be in school,” de Blasio said. “We take all the information, we've learned all the experience, we've listened to the data and the science, listened to the healthcare leaders, and now we've come up with a new approach – and those at home tests are going to be absolutely crucial.”
The announcement comes a day after Hochul promised to send 2 million testing kits to city schools, citing the need for children to learn in-person. It also follows weeks of demands from parents and teachers to increase testing inside the city’s classrooms.
“We saw the failed experiment [of virtual learning], despite the very best efforts of incredibly hard working passionate teachers who did their very best with remote teaching, and the parents who were just pulling their hair out of kitchen tables, trying to make sure that it works successfully, everybody did their part,” Hochul said Tuesday.
“But we also understand that schools are safe as a result of our joint mandates, and I have a statewide mass mandate for children in school to make sure they're safe,” the governor added. “Our teachers are vaccinated, so we all have to do our part to continue, to make sure that parents feel comfortable when they send their children back to school on Jan. 3.”
The new policy will go into place during the first week of the new Adams administration. The incoming mayor said Tuesday that he was in support of the plan and had been working with the de Blasio administration for the past several weeks in developing it.
“Stay safe and stay open, and not only our schools but our businesses and our entire city,” Adams said. “We spent $11 trillion fighting COVID – it is time for us to realize that this is a resilient city and a resilient country. We must reopen our city and we can do that.”
“Your children are safer in school, the numbers speak for themselves, and we are united to make sure that they will continue to be safe,” Adams added. “There is no other greater way of winning this battle and opening our city than testing and vaccination.”
About 98 percent of children who come in close contact with another student with COVID-19 do not end up getting infected with the virus, according to the city’s health department.
“We estimate that in schools, about 98 percent of close contacts do not end up developing COVID-19, so, the stay safe stay open plan revolves around more quickly identifying those cases, the 2 percent, and ensuring that they are isolating while keeping the other 98 percent of kids in school,” said Dr. Dave Chokshi, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
In a tweet sent following the announcement, U.S. Rep. Grace Meng asked if there would be any effort to test students before they return to the classroom on Jan. 3, adding that she could “not in good conscience ask my constituents to stand on testing lines for anywhere from 3-8 hours again.”
De Blasio answered that question Tuesday, saying that the officials agreed that the best approach was to increase the schools’ testing capacity when students return to school, not before.
“Our health care leadership, or education leadership, everyone looked at this…we really came to the conclusion that the approach we're taking, that we announced today, is the right way to go,” said de Blasio, who will leave office at the end of the week. “Schools have been incredibly safe. We want a smooth return to school, we want our kids in school.”
Around 96 percent of Department of Education employees are vaccinated.
The United Teachers Federation partially endorsed the plan to reopen schools post-holiday.
“Teachers are prepared to do their jobs on Jan. 3. The real issue is whether the city can do its job — ensuring that new testing initiatives are available in every school and an improved Situation Room [where COVID cases in schools are tracked] is actually in place by next week,” the UFT said in a statement. “We are moving closer to a safe reopening of school next week. But we are not there yet.”
City schools have seen around 26,300 COVID cases since classes started up in mid-September – around 18,680 of those cases have been students and around 7,580 have been teachers, according to DOE data.
Since the start of the school year, 4,744 classrooms have been closed due to COVID-19 and 17 schools have fully closed as a result of an outbreak. Eight of those full closures are currently in effect, according to the DOE.
Cases throughout the city continued to rise this week. Around 20,740 New Yorkers have tested positive for the virus each day in the past 7 days, according to the health department.
In Queens, neighborhoods including St. Albans, Laurelton, Rosedale, Cambria Heights, Edgemere, Far Rockaway, Belle Harbor, and Breezy Point have positive testing averages between 25 and nearly 28 percent, more than double the city’s average of a little more than 12 percent.
Statewide, nearly 211,000 tested positive for the virus at the start of the week and a little less than 1 in 5 COVID tests came back positive.
In New York City, pediatric hospitalizations have seen a spike – in mid-December, there were around 22 children hospitalized for the virus and by the week ending Dec. 23, there were 109 children hospitalized for COVID-19, according to the state’s health department.
