8 Upper East Side Schools Under Quarantine For COVID Cases: DOE

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — One week after the city began vaccinating youngsters against COVID-19, a smattering of schools on the Upper East Side are still swept up in virus-prevention protocols, according to the Department of Education.

As of Tuesday, eight public schools on the Upper East Side had either closed a classroom or imposed a partial quarantine due to a coronavirus exposure, according to the interactive map from the Department of Education.

Classrooms closed

The following schools have one or more classrooms closed due to a positive case in a student, teacher or staff member:

• P.S. 158 Bayard Taylor (1458 York Ave.)
• P.S. 290 Manhattan New School (311 East 82nd St.)

Partial quarantines

These schools were under partial classroom quarantines, in which only a subset of students in a classroom are required to quarantine while others can keep attending school.

• J.H.S. 167 Robert F. Wagner (220 East 76th St.)
• Eleanor Roosevelt High School (411 East 76th St.)
• P.S. 6 Lillie D. Blake (45 East 81st St.)
• Yorkville Community School (421 East 88th St.)
• P.S. 527 East Side School for Social Action (323 East 91st St.)
• P.S. 198 Isador E. Ida Straus (1700 Third Ave.)

Across the city, only two public schools were fully closed due to a virus outbreak: P.S. 166 in Astoria, and Village Academy in Far Rockaway — both in Queens. (A private parochial school in Astoria also shut down this week after two students and an unvaccinated teacher caught COVID, its principal told Patch.)

Altogether, 2,278 classrooms have been closed due to COVID exposures since the start of school on Sept. 13. That's less than four percent of the 65,000 spaces the city is using as classrooms this year.

Once a common headache for parents, full school closures have become far less common this year thanks to a revised policy by the DOE.

The vaccine rollout for children aged 5-11 began last Monday thanks to federal approval. Some school-based vaccination sites were quickly plagued by long lines and supply shortfalls — though Mayor Bill de Blasio chalked that up as a positive sign of strong interest.

"We have been pleasantly surprised at how big the response has been at the school level," he said last week. About 17,000 kids got their shots over the first three-day period.

Now, three state-run mass-vaccination sites in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens have also opened up to children, as officials hope to speed up the rollout.

Book a vaccine appointment at vaccinefinder.nyc.gov, or for state-run sites, ny.gov/vaccine.