End The 2-Case Rule For Coronavirus School Closures, Lander Says

NEW YORK, NY — Education officials still have no word on when they might change a controversial two-case school closure rule that has been under review for at least six weeks.

Department of Education leaders offered only a timeline of "soon" when pushed by Brooklyn Council Member Brad Lander during a City Council hearing on Tuesday about the rule, which requires entire schools to be shut down once two unlinked cases of coronavirus are detected on the campus.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and the DOE first said in early February that they would reevaluate the threshold, which critics say is out of line with updated public health guidelines.

"Schools aren't really 'open' if they close every other day," Lander said in a Tweet on Tuesday. "We need a test and trace-driven method of controlling spread, not arbitrary closures from two unconnected cases in schools [with] thousands of students."

Under the two-case rule, 2,127 schools across the five boroughs have faced extended closures and 817 have been shut down for 24 hours since September. The rule requires an entire school campus to be shut down if there are two or more cases without any clear links to one another.

Lander and parents have pointed out that the rule means students are forced to learn at home even when there was no coronavirus case in their classroom or evidence of spread within the school. The rule also means separate schools within a single building are both shut down even if cases were only detected in one of the schools.

Disease experts have called the rule "conservative" and said the city should consider scrapping numerical thresholds altogether in favor of school-by-school analysis, according to Chalkbeat.

"Parents are every single day, every minute, asking about this," Lander told DOE officials.

Teacher union leaders, meanwhile, have stood behind the requirement, saying it is too soon to relax coronavirus precautions.

Newly-appointed Schools Chancellor Meisha Ross Porter said the department is reevaluating the rule based on new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Give me a little time," she told Lander. "The new CDC guidance was really promising in this area in particular."