41% of public school students did not comply

Chalkbeat

Just over half of New York City public school students are fully vaccinated, according to data the education department released Friday.

In total, 59% of the city’s public school students have received at least one vaccine dose and nearly 52% are considered fully vaccinated.

The information is required under City Council law, and includes a breakdown of school-level vaccination rates and the number of students who have consented to in-school COVID testing. Updates will be shared every two weeks. The figures don’t include charter schools.

The data show that there are wide disparities by school and neighborhood. Schools in Brooklyn’s District 23, which includes Ocean Hill, Brownsville and parts of East New York, had the lowest rates of vaccination, with just 38% of students receiving at least one dose. Districts 16, which includes a significant chunk of Bedford-Stuyvesant, and 18, which includes Flatbush and Canarsie, both had vaccination rates of 43%. On Staten Island, the rate is 47%.

“In the coming months, we are working with our partner health care agencies on an outreach campaign to encourage vaccination in the communities with the lowest rates,” education department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer said in a statement.

Manhattan’s District 2 has the highest vaccination rate, with 80% of students receiving at least one dose. That district spans much of Lower Manhattan, some of Chinatown, and the Upper East Side. Not far behind: District 3 in Manhattan, which includes the Upper West Side and part of Harlem, at 77%. Next is District 26 in Bayside, Queens, where 74% of students have at least one dose.

At nearly 250 of the city’s schools, fewer than a third of students have received at least one dose. Out of the city’s nearly 1,600 district schools, the share of students who have been vaccinated with at least one dose ranges from from just 12% to 94%.

Chancellor Porter screwed up, enables superspreader at Astoria school

Astoria Post 

The city shut down an Astoria public school for 10 days due to a COVID-19 outbreak among students and teachers.

The Department of Education closed the doors of P.S. 166 The Henry Gradstein School beginning Wednesday after 25 positive cases were reported in the last seven days. All classes are being held remotely during the 10-day closure, which ends on Nov. 19.

According to DOE data, 22 students and three staff members tested positive for COVID-19 from Nov. 3 through Nov. 9.

P.S. 166 is only the second school to be fully closed due to a COVID-19 outbreak since the start of the school year. The first was in East Harlem.

The DOE aimed to reduce the number of school closures — which parents said interrupted their childrens’ learning last school year — when it introduced a new COVID-19 policy this term.

The current policy states that schools will only be closed when the city’s health department determines that there is “widespread transmission” in the school. The DOE, however, doesn’t specify how many cases determine the threshold for widespread transmission.

Previously, the DOE shuttered school buildings for two weeks when at least two unrelated coronavirus cases were confirmed. The policy resulted in frequent closures, which parents said created instability and confusion for young students.

The policy change appears to have resulted in fewer interruptions thus far.

Prior to a full closure, the DOE shuttered several classrooms at P.S. 166, meaning full classes of students and their teachers were quarantining and learning remotely.

Since classes began on Sept. 13, there have been 37 total positive cases among the 975 school members — both students and staff — at P.S. 166.

This school already had 15 staffers test positive and Porter kept this "gold standard" going for another 8 weeks. Even more deranged is that a vax short bus was going to stop by PS 166 to get kids inoculated for and I quote Dr. Davey Fauci Jr. "extra layer of protection"