Hell's Kitchen School Closed By COVID Amid Push To Change Rules

HELL'S KITCHEN, NY — One school building in Hell's Kitchen was forced to close this week after confirming multiple coronavirus cases, as some officials push the city to relax its rule that requires such closures.

P.S. 111 Adolph S. Ochs, on West 53rd Street near 10th Avenue, closed on Monday for 10 days. It was one of 272 school buildings around the city that were under temporary or extended closures Friday, due to Department of Education policies.

Under the city's two-case rule, an entire school campus must shut down if two or more cases are confirmed without any clear links to one another.

The policy has been under review for at least six weeks, and on Tuesday, City Council members pushed DOE leaders to defend the controversial rule.

"Schools aren't really 'open' if they close every other day," Brooklyn Councilmember Brad Lander said in a tweet on Tuesday. "We need a test and trace-driven method of controlling spread, not arbitrary closures from two unconnected cases in schools [with] thousands of students."

Lander was one of a bipartisan group of lawmakers that pressed the department for updates on when the policy might be revised.

Under the two-case rule, 2,235 schools across the five boroughs have faced extended closures and 812 have been shut down for 24 hours since September.

Lander and parents have pointed out that the rule means students are forced to learn at home even when there was no coronavirus case in their classroom or evidence of spread within the school. The rule also means separate schools within a single building are both shut down even if cases were only detected in one of the schools.

Disease experts have called the rule "conservative" and said the city should consider scrapping numerical thresholds altogether in favor of school-by-school analysis, according to Chalkbeat.

"Parents are every single day, every minute, asking about this," Lander told DOE officials.

Teacher union leaders, meanwhile, have stood behind the requirement, saying it is too soon to relax coronavirus precautions.

Newly-appointed Schools Chancellor Meisha Ross Porter said the department is reevaluating the rule based on new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Give me a little time," she told Lander. "The new CDC guidance was really promising in this area in particular."

Patch reporter Anna Quinn contributed.

Related coverage: End The 2-Case Rule For Coronavirus School Closures, Lander Says