Dear Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Porter,

Everyone who works for NYCDOE must protect students’ safety.  To keep our communities safer, we demand more COVID testing in New York City’s public schools.

Children aged thirteen to seventeen have the highest positivity rates in New York City.  For children aged five to twelve, the positivity rate increased tenfold over the summer.  In the second half of August, about one in twenty school-aged children has been testing positive.  That rate translates to at least one COVID-positive student in every K-12 class in New York City.

Just when schools need more COVID testing, NYCDOE plans less.  Last year, once every week, NYCDOE tested 20% of the students.  This year, every OTHER week, NYCDOE will test 10%.  Testing half as many kids, half as often, reduces safety.  Breakthrough cases are common, but NYCDOE will not test vaccinated staff or students.  NYCDOE now allows families to refuse in-school testing.  We still do not have testing for 3K, pre-K, or kindergarten; citywide, that leaves about 14% of our students in classes that never get tested.

The following measures will keep our city safer:
 

Test 40% or more every week.  Larger sample sizes detect spreading cases.  More frequent testing detects cases while there’s still time to act.

Test the vaccinated.  When the Delta variant breaks through, vaccinated people spread COVID.  Everyone stays safer if vaccinated students participate.

Require participation.  This year should be like last year: families should acknowledge that their children will be tested, but testing should not be optional.

Test early childhood.  Random testing cannot monitor untested classrooms.  Include 3K, 4K, and kindergarten.

Restore staff testing.  Every day, principals and assistant principals enter nearly every classroom.  Educational administrators travel school to school.  None of us wants to pass COVID to the students we love.  If administrators, teachers, paraprofessionals, school aides, custodial staff and kitchen workers all test alongside our students, we know our kids are safer.

 
You charged us with opening schools and keeping them open.  More testing leads to more early quarantining, but less testing eventually results in more cases than our city can ignore.  Another systemwide shutdown would undo everyone's goals for mental health, physical wellbeing, and academic learning.  

We need early detection to maintain student health and public trust.  Give us more testing, more often, for much more safety.