Keep New York City Schools Open
There are smarter ways to slow the spread of Covid-19 than by inflicting academic and psychological damage on kids forced to stay home.
It’s working.
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesNew York Mayor Bill de Blasio took a lot of heat last spring for delaying school closings as the Covid-19 pandemic began its deadly rage. Now the mayor has been quick to announce plans to close all of the city’s public schools, possibly this week, if infection rates keep rising.
That would be a mistake. Educators and public health specialists are better positioned now than in the early days of the pandemic to make an informed judgment weighing coronavirus risks against the costs to students of prolonged school shutdowns and a retreat to online education. The good news is that the city’s reopening experiment — New York was the first major city to reopen this fall — has demonstrated that schools can be reopened safely (although only about one-third of students have chosen in-person instruction). Testing in mid-October revealed only 28 school-related Covid-19 cases, a .17 percent positivity rate compared to a citywide average above 1 percent.