Coronavirus Closes 4 Prospect, Crown Heights Schools: DOE

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — Four schools in Prospect and Crown Heights were temporarily closed this week due to coronavirus cases as some officials push the city to relax its rule that requires such closures.

Clara Barton High School, Middle College High School, P.S. 375, all in Crown Heights, and P.S. 9 in Prospect Heights were all closed this week after coronavirus cases were detected in the schools, according to the Department of Education's map of active cases.

Middle College and P.S. 9 were both under 24-hour closure, while the other two schools face extended shut downs into next week.

Under the city's two-case rule, an entire school campus must shut down if two or more cases are confirmed without any clear links to one another. The closure can last between 24 hours and 14 days.

The closures come as a campaign to change the policy ramps up. The two-case rule has been under review for at least six weeks, and on Tuesday, City Council members pushed DOE leaders to defend the controversial approach.

"Schools aren't really 'open' if they close every other day," Brooklyn Councilmember Brad 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."

Lander was one of a bipartisan group of lawmakers that pressed the department for updates on when the policy might be revised.

Under the two-case rule, 2,235 schools across the five boroughs have faced extended closures and 812 have been shut down for 24 hours since September.

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.

Read more here: End The 2-Case Rule For Coronavirus School Closures, Lander Says