The school reopening process is challenging for district leaders and educators alike. It requires a thorough and careful consideration of policies around hybrid scheduling, thresholds for closing schools, and multilayered mitigation strategies to reduce the risk of in-person transmission. NYC’s experience offers lessons for other districts struggling to reopen school buildings safely and keep them open as community infection rates rise and fall.
To address the issue of in-person transmission, NYC’s reopening plan focuses on contact tracing and testing. Students and staff are screened using a nasal swab for molecular testing. This approach allows the city to identify cases of student-to-student and teacher-to-teacher transmission. It also identifies individuals who have been in close proximity to a confirmed case and can offer them hotel placement, which is an important safety measure. To support this work, the department recruited and trained the NYC Test & Trace Corps.
Students with immunocompromised health conditions, including those receiving treatment for cancer or HIV, are encouraged to return to school for in-person instruction through a hybrid learning model. In order to do so, they must complete a survey on their preferred mode of instruction. The survey is available online and can be accessed at any time; families may choose to use it to shift from exclusively remote learning to in-person instruction. In addition, any family with an immunocompromised child who has not completed the survey can request that their child receive in-person instruction at their school via the NYCDOE’s medically necessary instruction application.