Some teachers in the city are calling for schools to go fully remote as the coronavirus positivity rate continues to increase across the boroughs.
A faction of the United Federation of Teachers known as The Solidarity Caucus says they have fears that the virus will be brought back to schools due to the post-holiday surge.
They say with the city’s positivity rates surpassing 9%, students should be kept fully remote.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” says Quinn Zannoni, a member of The Solidarity Caucus. “Why we would expose people, staff and all the community in the school to such high levels of infection.”
The threshold to set off a schoolwide shutdown is also 9%, but the state calculates its numbers differently and it is more than 2.5% lower than the city’s.
The United Federation of Teachers issued a statement, saying in part: “Our experience so far has been that the actual infection rate in schools has been very small, including in hard-hit neighborhoods, but we will be monitoring results closely as in-school testing begins again.”
Students in 3K to fifth grade, including District 75 schools, are heading back to the classroom today.
High school students are still fully remote.