Over the course of the past two weeks, Covid positivity rates have ticked upward in New York City. But case rates among students have surpassed those in the general population (13.3 per 100,000 versus 9.6 citywide, for a seven-day period ending on March 22), figures the city’s Department of Education did not address when I reached out to ask about them. Some schools have had significant jumps. Hunter elementary school ended the week of March 12 with four cases; the week of March 19, there were 24.
One complaint advocates of continued masking have had is with the availability of data on Covid cases coming from the city’s education department, which offers a daily tracker some find insufficiently comprehensive. One group, Parents for Responsive Equitable Safe Schools, set out to scrape data regularly and deliver a broad view. What their figures reveal is an increase in the total number of Covid cases in New York City schools this academic year, which jumps from 135,977 cases on March 7 to just under 137,900 cases on March 23, a notable increase over the previous two-week period.
Even if most children have not fallen especially sick since the repeal of masking rules, consequences remain. Given that students need to isolate for five days when they test positive, the rise in cases means that hundreds of children are kept out of school after two years of what are obviously significant academic losses resulting from reduced or nonexistent in-person learning. What they have instead is “asynchronous” learning at home.

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