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New York City Is First Large School District Planning To Contact Trace Students. But Will It Work?
By
Sophia Chang
and
Jessica Gould
Published Aug 1, 2020
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By
Sophia Chang
and
Jessica Gould
Published Aug 1, 2020
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New York City’s broad protocols for a COVID-19 outbreak in the city’s 1,800 public and charter schools is likely the first plan for contact tracing in schools that’s been put forth by a major city -- but some educators, parents, medical experts and legislators are casting doubts on the plan’s ability to contain the pandemic without widespread and repeated school shutdowns.
After the city Department of Education released the protocols Thursday, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Friday that public schools will reopen in September only if the coronavirus positivity rate in the city stays below 3%, as it has since June 10th.
The threshold, which will be based on a seven-day rolling average of tests, is more ambitious than the one set by Governor Andrew Cuomo and public health experts, who have recommended a cutoff of 5% as the baseline where schools can consider reopening. Citywide, the virus positivity rate has held steady between 1% to 2% for nearly two months.
The plan for schools experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks involve several possible situations. They range from a single positive case, in which students and staff with close contact with an infected person in a classroom will self-quarantine for 14 days, to at least two cases in different classrooms which would close the entire school for 14 days and shift to full remote learning.
A chart from the Department of Education that lays out various scenarios if a COVID-19 case or outbreak happens in a school community this fall. The scenarios range from shutting down one classroom to shutting down entire schools.
DOE
“We have to prepare ourselves for a very non-linear experience,” de Blasio said Friday at a news conference.
Here’s what a range of officials, medical and public health experts, teachers and parents said about the city’s plan.
TESTING
The plan calls for all DOE staff members to take a COVID-19 test shortly before the first day of school, the date which has yet to be announced.
“School staff will have priority access for testing at 34 city-run testing locations, with tests provided free of charge and with expedited results. This testing is also available for families citywide,” the DOE said, though it’s not clear if students and families will receive expedited results as well.
City Councilmember Mark Levine, who chairs the council’s health committee, pointed out that testing availability remains an issue, sure to be compounded by the demand by potentially 1.1 million students and their families, and 200,000 DOE staffers and their families. Results are currently taking as long as 10 days to receive, raising the question of whether contact tracing will even be effective.
“My biggest unanswered concern is, how are we going to secure a rapid testing capacity? We have a desperate shortage today,” Levine said.
Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers union, sent out a statement calling for random testing with quick results: "We need randomized testing of school communities throughout the year and a vigorous contact tracing system that gives schools test results and a course of action with a 24-hour turnaround,” he said. “What’s more, even if there are stronger safety standards in place, we still have grave concerns about the city’s ability to enforce them effectively in every school. Right now, this is not enough to protect students and staff.”
And Mark Cannizzaro, president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, released a statement Friday expressing ”serious concerns about what has been communicated to school leaders so far regarding safety protocols and instructional designs as well the city’s ability to provide schools with the necessary resources to implement their plan.”
CONTACT TRACING AMONG KIDS
The city plans to implement contact tracing through the NYC Test + Trace Corps and city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to determine close contacts within the school after a positive case. In the event of a lab-confirmed infection, schools will let all families and students know, and all students and teachers that were close contacts will be instructed to self-quarantine for 14 days. The city's program has recently been described in a New York Times article as “poorly run and disorganized."
Contact tracing is “hard -- really hard,” said Dr. Barun Mathema, assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health who has studied tuberculosis spread. “It is nuanced. It is labor intensive. And, you know, it requires a fair amount of experience to do right because you're trying to figure out what’s the network of an unseeable event, like nobody has seen the event happen, like nobody sees transmission happening, usually just inferring and saying, ‘okay, who do you know, where were you, who do you play with, who do you work with.’”
“If that system is not efficient, then that to me would be somewhat problematic,” Mathema added.
David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors, raised confidentiality concerns as well: “Contact tracing depends on building a rapport, building trust, protecting confidentiality with individuals,” he said. “Engaging students, young students, in this process raises a whole other layer of questions. You’re going to have that permission to talk to parents. So essentially, you’ll be working with family units and parents to try to analyze the contacts that a student may have had in a busy classroom and busy school, there’s enormous questions about the feasibility of doing this.” He added, “I am not confident the city can pull this off from a contact tracing perspective and I don’t think parents and teachers will be confident, either.”
The DOE said positive cases would not be identified by name during contact tracing in schools.
IS THIS PLAN FEASIBLE?
De Blasio is dangling a big carrot with reopening schools, and it’s up to New Yorkers to keep cases low so that everyone can remain in school safely, Mathema said.
“In New York, we've done a good job but you know we've also come back from a very, very dark few months,” he said. “There is a possibility, based on the rigor of the city's response ... and not only from the city but also from its citizens to maintain community transmission well, so we can possibly open up school...That is, in fact, up to us.”
But Councilmember Mark Treyger, who heads the council's education committee, said it’s not just how people behave, some schools are reporting they’re woefully undersupplied:
“Not only do school cleaners not have the money to do deep cleaning and disinfecting every night for the school year ahead, but now I'm told that there's a backorder on very, very vital supplies such as Lysol wipes,” Treyger said. “The problem that I see is that every school district across America and around the world is probably ordering the same thing. So I am not confident that they're going to have everything they need for the school year ahead.”
INEQUITY
Some critics of the city’s plan say the rigidity of the protocols will lead to more schools shutting in lower-income neighborhoods where COVID-19 was much more widespread, including Black and Latino neighborhoods.
“It is more likely that we will have to close schools in low-income neighborhoods, predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods,” Levine said. “This is a major source of inequity in this crisis, which is the higher-income families are more likely to be able to do their jobs from home, they're more likely to be able to telecommute and low-income families and communities of color are more likely to have jobs that require them to show up in person, and that puts an enormous strain on families that need childcare.”
Dr. Ramon Tallaj, founder and chairman of SOMOS Community Care, which serves mostly Medicaid recipients in the city’s immigrant communities, also said the plan failed to account for many lower-income families’ inability to engage in remote learning effectively if a classroom shuts down for 14 days.
“Don't send the kid from Washington Heights, the Bronx, Queens, parts of Brooklyn and Harlem (to remote learning) the same way you do with the people in this area which are rich people,” Tallaj said. “We don't have computers, don't have WiFi.”
The real necessity for families to plan for schools shutting down is another call for better government assistance for working parents, said Dr. Neil Calman, the head of the Institute for Family Health in the Bronx. “It’s going to depend on what happens with unemployment insurance, whether we're going to recognize the fact that some parents are going to need to stay home and they're just not going to be able to go back to work," he said.
WHAT PARENTS ARE SAYING
One parent, Chris -- a Bayside, Queens father who decline to give his last name -- wants to send his five-year-old son back to school this fall. He said his son struggled with remote learning and social dislocation during quarantine, and called the plans "a reasonable approach."
"If we could get rapid test reporting going maybe the school nurse could incorporate testing kids with symptoms," he said. (A nurse shortage, though, is also a concern). Chris works in construction and says there's a similar protocol at his site "and -- knock wood -- no one has gotten sick since we opened in June. It's doable."
Mathema, the epidemiologist, said as the parent of two young kids, he’s keeping a close eye on the city’s plan, which he called “gutsy. And, you know, on some level it sort of has to happen.”
But another teacher and parent said she was feeling "cognitive dissonance" over her conflicting feelings of wanting school to reopen and also feeling that it's not possible. "It just seems like undoable at this point,” said teacher Miriam Sicherman, who teaches third and fourth graders at a school in Manhattan. “I mean, kids are gonna get sick. You know, we are not at 0% virus transmission, even though we're low. It's going to happen, and to go back and forth frequently throughout the year between hybrid and all remote just seems very unwieldy.”
WHAT’S NEXT
City officials submitted the school health and safety protocol plans, including contact tracing, to the state Friday. While Cuomo has said he will decide on approving each district’s reopening plan by August 7th, the city obtained an extension for another 14 days to submit school-specific plans which "will allow our schools time to adapt district-based guidance for their setting and community, incorporate their preferred scheduling model into their plan, and engage families and school communities on any school-based decisions that need to be made," according to DOE spokesperson Miranda Barbot.
Tagged
COVID-19
schools reopening
mayor bill de blasio
DOE
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Sophia Chang
Sophia Chang is a former WNYC and Gothamist reporter.
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Jessica Gould
Jessica is the education reporter for WNYC and Gothamist. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Jessica reported on the shutdown and reopening of the nation’s largest school system, highlighting the unprecedented impacts on learning, health and mental health for students, staff and families. Got a tip? Email [email protected]
Read more
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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