Something to consider when comparing the school test positivity rate (which has been low) with the broader NYC test rate:

The school rate only includes tests done in school. If you’re in school to get a test, presumably you show no symptoms — or else you’d have stayed home.
So the school tests should mainly be catching only those cases that are asymptomatic.

Unlike the citywide rate, which would include people going to get a test because they think they might have covid.
The school positivity rate doesn’t include cases where the student or staffer tested positive outside of the DOE testing program — which is how I’d imagine many people with symptoms would discover they were positive, after staying home and visiting a non-school site.
If people are following the rules in schools — stay home if you’re sick, if you have a fever etc — they’re not getting tested by DOE. Could be one part of why the rates are so different.
I will say I think the point of this DOE testing was always to catch asymptomatic spread — again, if you have symptoms, you shouldn’t be in school. And we weren’t sure how common asymptomatic cases in kids were, so there’s good reason to test for it.
Of course anyone with experience in schools will also tell you it’s possible symptomatic people are attending — some parents are sometimes desperate for a place for their child to be and willing to write off illness as a cold. But it’s not a huge population.

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More from @Jill_Jorgensen

19 Nov
In case you missed it this morning, I asked @UFT President Michael Mulgrew whether he was open to changing the 3% number for opening/closing schools. He says he prefers a more geographic approach:
One point Mulgrew made earlier: he thinks the governor's orange zone method makes more sense because it closes other things in addition to schools. Inside schools, people wear masks, rates are low. Outside, not always the case, and eventually, that could penetrate schools.
Also from earlier in Mulgrew's appearance on MO1:

"When the city brought us the number of 3%, we brought it to our doctors and they said 3%'s ok, but we also put on the table that we thought we should have a borough based approach or a geographic based approach...
Read 4 tweets
18 Nov
“No one is happy about this decision we all in fact are very sad about this decision,” @NYCMayor says of closing schools. “But we set a very clear standard and we need to stick to that standard.”
.@NYCMayor says he spent much of the morning talking to the state, which... you wouldn’t know from the governor’s presser
“I want to emphasize that we are looking at this as a temporary closure. We will get students back in buildings as soon as we can safely,” @DOEChancellor says.
Read 9 tweets
16 Sep
NEW: As schools face a staffing crunch, @NYCSchools will no longer require that blended learning students be given synchronous (aka live) instruction every day they're remote. Live teaching time will vary by school. Fully remote will still get live teaching daily. More soon.
Schools will no longer be required to offer ANY live instruction on blended students' remote days if they don't have the staff available to do so.
This is a major change in guidance, and in what students will experience, and comes, oh, 12 hours before they're logging on tomorrow.
Shout out to my pal @danrivoli for getting this news on the air for me, because I am currently not camera ready (aka I am in my pajamas because I am on the morning show early tomorrow)
Read 7 tweets
27 Aug
NEW: Blended learning students will have separate teachers for the days they are in person and the days they are remote, and those teachers will work as a team, per new guidance @NYCSchools has sent to principals.
The city is ALSO creating a new job title of "virtual content specialist," to help provide instructional resources for online learning. Seems that they have not even posted these jobs yet, two weeks out:
"Additional guidance on posting and filling the role is forthcoming."
More on how this is supposed to work:
"Remote and on-site teachers will be organized into teaching pairs or teams to coordinate instruction using their school’s shared, inclusive and digital curriculum and complemented, as deemed appropriate, with resources created by the VCS"
Read 6 tweets
17 Aug
Amid big questions about whether schools are ready to open Sept. 10th, @NYCMayor showing a slick video promising that schools will have what they need to open. Meanwhile, principals say they have no clue how much PPE they'll get or when it will arrive.
"Whatever our schools need, they're going to have. We're going to send them the supplies in bulk before school begins and then re-stock as needed," @NYCMayor says.
(This is without even touching on the fact that schools say outside of safety concerns, they have no clue how they're actually going to have the number of teachers they need to staff classrooms)
Read 5 tweets
18 Jun
Here’s my story on what’s been happening at Success Academy in recent days: ny1.com/nyc/all-boroug…
I spoke to Ebony Woods, a former staffer at Success Springfield Gardens where a white assistant principal put up a bulletin board that immediately struck black educators as inappropriate. It featured black children hanging upside down from a branch covered in a leafy vine.
Woods and others raised the issue to school leaders who said they hadn’t thought of it that way.
"How could you be so insensitive not to think that, and why do we have to teach you?” Woods said. “Why is it our job to teach you the insensitiveness that you have?"
Read 8 tweets

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