Education
More testing needed
before New York City
schools can reopen,
mayor says
BY ALEJANDRA
O’CONNELL-DOMENECH
New York City public schools will
need more COVID-19 testing in
order to reopen again and will
likely follow a phased-in approach, Mayor
Bill de Blasio said on Nov. 23.
On Nov. 20, the mayor said that city data
projected the state will place the city in an
“orange zone” as early as next week. An
“orange zone” is a state designation that
prompts the closure of schools, shuttering
of non-essential businesses, caps gatherings
to 10 people, bans indoor dining, and
reduces the allowed capacity in houses of
worship to 33% or 25 people.
“Once that happens, we will be in a position
to take additional measures to reopen
schools,” de Blasio told reporters during
a morning press conference. “There’s a
clear protocol for that, it involves a lot
more testing.”
Last week, officials temporarily closed
all New York City public schools after
the city’s COVID-19 positivity rate based
on a seven-day rolling average reached
3%–a threshold number set by the mayor
and powerful city teacher union, the
United Federation of Teachers, over the
summer.
Under state guidelines, schools in orange
zones can reopen as early as five days after
the zone designation has been announced.
Students and staff must show a negative
COVID-19 test before being allowed back
onto campuses for in-person classes and
25% of all adults and children need to be
tested weekly.
“Testing will be something that everyone
will have to participate in,” de Blasio added
before encouraging all parents to submit
testing consent forms for their children to
schools. “If you really want your child in
school, you really have to help us out.”
The city’s special needs students in
district 75 would be the first allowed to
re-enter schools for in-person learning followed
by 3-k and Pre-K students. Elementary,
middle and high school students will
then return in waves.
On Monday, the state COVID-19 data
shows the city’s positivity rate below 3%–
at 2.5%–stalling an orange zone designation
for now. However, parts of the city
like upper Manhattan and Staten Island
will become yellow zones reducing the
number of congregants allowed in houses
of worship to 50% capacity, capping social
gatherings at 25 people and limiting the
number of indoor and outdoor diners to
four per table.
PHOTO BY TODD MAISEL
Schools were ordered closed on Nov. 19 due to the latest COVID-19 outbreak.
HIGHER ED TODAY
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New Yorkers are understandably worried
not only about the next few months but the years
ahead. Even as we finally see rays of hope in the
vaccines that could eventually vanquish the coronavirus,
many envision a long and uncertain
recovery for the city. But while there is no doubt
we face daunting challenges, one thing I am confident
about is the role CUNY will play in the city’s
recovery and renewal.
This is a conviction born of the belief I have in
our community of more than 300,000 students, faculty
and staff as an engine of economic strength
for the city—and of the pride I have in the impact
of our cutting-edge research institutes, graduate
programs and professional schools. The expertise
of our faculty and high quality of our graduate
and professional-school students are part of the
lifeblood of the city, and that has never been truer
than during this unfathomably hard year.
The CUNY Graduate School of Public Health
and Health Policy has made important contributions
to the battle against COVID-19. CUNY SPH
faculty, students and alumni have led and participated
in national studies, surveys of city residents
and projects to increase vaccine confidence. Partnering
with the Barcelona Institute for Global
Health and other international institutions, the
school has helped public health officials and other
decision makers track trends in the pandemic
and identify and correct weaknesses in their responses.
Several CUNY SPH experts, meanwhile,
have been influential voices in the media, contributing
much-needed trustworthy, science-based
information and guidance.
Scientists on CUNY campuses have been
hard at work on a range of research projects in the
battle against COVID-19. Among the most notable,
with national impact, is research at Queens College
that developed a process for monitoring the
level of coronavirus in New York City sewage to
assess its true prevalence, help identify new outbreaks
before testing does and guide health officials’
response.
Apart from the pandemic, CUNY expertise
and creativity continue to help drive innovation
in fields of importance to New York. At the
Graduate Center—one of the city’s great incubators
of ideas and research in the public interest—
the Center for Urban Research’s census “hard to
count” map is nationally acclaimed as an indispensable
tool helping civil rights groups, foundations
and local governments target communities
with low response rates for the 2020 Census. It’s
an especially critical innovation in a year when
the coronavirus made a fair and accurate count
even harder than usual in New York and across
the country.
Meanwhile, faculty researchers across CUNY
are making the University a leader in developing
climate-change solutions for urban and coastal
environments, and in growing New York’s green
economy. This year we launched a Climate Crisis
Research Grant program to tap the vast expertise
of our faculty and encourage collaboration across
disciplines and between campuses. With our
strong ties to city and state agencies and our integration
with neighborhoods throughout the city,
CUNY is uniquely positioned to inform the local
response to the undeniable threats of this global
problem. Among the 21 teams selected for funding
is a group of environmental engineers who
invented a method for turning evaporation into
energy. Another group is using flood sensors in
the Rockaways to develop strategies for the city’s
coastal neighborhoods to adapt to rising seas.
Another team will study the effects of a warming
climate on the health of older New Yorkers with
cardiovascular and pulmonary conditions.
CUNY’s professional schools, meanwhile, are
deeply committed to the service of the city and
its communities. Students in the CUNY School of
Medicine—one of the nation’s most diverse medical
schools—joined the coronavirus response at
the onset of the crisis, providing patient support
at St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx, video conferencing
with families of patients in the ICU and
staffing the COVID-19 test center at Staten Island
University Hospital. While medical schools across
the U.S. struggle to enroll students of color, more
than half of the CUNY School of Medicine’s students
are Black or Hispanic. We’re very proud of
the school’s mission of improving primary health
care in urban and underserved communities.
Similarly, the CUNY School of Law is the
country’s most diverse (53 percent of its students
are people of color and 26 percent identify as LGBQT+)
and ranks as the top public-interest law
school, with 59 percent of graduates working in
that area, more than three times the national
average. The benefit to the city is real: The law
school operates a dozen clinics that address critical
legal needs—everything from health justice
to workers’ rights. The clinics tap the expertise of
faculty and put law students to work representing
clients and staffing advocacy projects. Law school
faculty and students also work with CUNY Citizenship
Now!, the nation’s largest university legal
assistance program providing free citizenship
and immigration law services since 1997.
Students and faculty at the Craig Newmark
Graduate School of Journalism are employing
a range of digital techniques to report on New
York’s battle with the coronavirus. They’re part of
the future of journalism at a time when fact-based
reporting has never been more important. The
Newmark school and its centers—the Tow-Knight
Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, the Center
for Community Media and the McGraw Center
for Business Journalism—form an important hub
for creating a sustainable future for high quality,
high impact journalism.
For its part, the School of Labor and Urban
Studies has been a leader in adult and worker education
for nearly 35 years. The school is affiliated
with the award-wining CUNY School of Professional
Studies, a national leader in online learning,
a role that has been of vital importance to the
University in the age of COVID.
These are just a few examples of CUNY’s
strengths, its commitment to New York—and why
I’m optimistic the University will help drive a robust
comeback from COVID-19.
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12 November 26, 2020 Schneps Media