Schools in N.Y.C. may close
The nation’s largest school system is on the precipice of closing thousands of schools.
New York City, once the global epicenter of the pandemic, now has far lower rates of community infection than most of the country, but the numbers are quickly climbing. On Thursday, the seven-day test positivity rate rose to 2.6 percent. If that number hits 3 percent, schools are supposed to close.
For many of the approximately 300,000 families who have cobbled together ways to send their kids to classrooms for a few days a week in this fractured school year, the reversal is a gut punch.
Particularly maddening is that restaurants, bars and gyms — indoor spaces which have been shown to be primary vectors of coronavirus infection — remain open, albeit with some restrictions.
New York City’s schools have recorded a much smaller number of infections. A recent positive-test rate was just 0.17 percent, prompting one of the city’s top health officials to declare that public schools are among the safest public places around.
Many countries in Western Europe have chosen to keep classrooms open and to place restrictions on bars and restaurants instead, a contrast that has not gone without notice.
“That N.Y.C.’s public schools may have to shut down because the city and state felt they just had to let people dine indoors and work out at a gym says all we need to know about how much our society values public education, particularly when it comes to low-income Black & brown kids,” our colleague Nikole Hannah-Jones said on Twitter.
Other major American cities with climbing cases have already delayed returns or walked back reopening plans for public schools. On Thursday, Detroit announced it would stop all in-person learning. This week, cities including Minneapolis and Philadelphia delayed planned returns. In late October, Boston pulled its few in-person students. And almost all public school students in Los Angeles; Chicago; Washington, D.C.; and San Francisco are also learning remotely.
The New York Times