New York City’s 3 Percent Problem

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 23 November 2020

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week New York City’s public schools will close their doors and students will once again undertake online instruction. The shutdown was triggered when 3 percent of coronavirus tests in the city came back positive over seven days. There are questions, however, around this number being used as a trigger — some health officials maintain that schools are safe. When is the right time for schools to reopen and what is the right threshold for closures? We explore what lessons New York City’s struggles hold for the rest of the nation. Guest: Eliza Shapiro, who covers New York City education for The New York Times, walks us through the city’s decision to reopen schools and the difficult decision to shut them down. We want to hear from you. Fill out our survey about The Daily and other shows at: nytimes.com/thedailysurvey For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading: New York City’s public school system will close this week, moving to all-remote instruction and disrupting the education of roughly 300,000 children.As schools close again, frustrated and angry parents say the decision does not make the city safer.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the New York Times, I'm Michael Babaro. This is the Daily.
0:10.0	Today, the story of how the nation's largest public school system
0:16.0	defied the odds to reopen for in-person classes, then properly shut down again after just eight weeks.
0:25.0	My colleague, Eliza Shapiro, on the lessons from New York's experience.
0:32.0	It's Monday, November 23rd.
0:38.0	Eliza, I wonder if you can describe for me the experience of being a New York City public school parent or teacher or administrator over the past few weeks.
0:49.0	So, and out to the coronavirus pandemic, all eyes on New York City schools this every morning for the last few weeks in New York City.
0:57.0	Hundreds of thousands of people, parents, teachers, kids, politicians have been engaged in this very intense, unusual ritual of rushing their computers or picking up their phones every morning and frantically checking Twitter or the news.
1:14.0	To see if today was the day we were going to hit this reviled number, 3%.
1:20.0	And when we hit that, schools will close, but for right now, they remain open.
1:25.0	And tell me about that number of 3%.
1:28.0	So, 3% is the average number of coronavirus tests that come back positive across New York City over a seven-day period.
1:37.0	So, once we hit that number, the entire school system shuts down.
1:41.0	So, no wiggle room, 3% closed.
1:44.0	No wiggle room.
1:45.0	New York City is moving closer and closer to closing its schools.
1:49.0	And it now stands at 2.57%.
1:52.0	2.6% inching closer, 2.83%.
1:56.0	Less than 2.10ths of a point from the shutdown trigger, 3% could be right around the corner.
2:01.0	The question is whether New York City's Department of Education is ready to go all remote once schools are closed.
2:07.0	And last Wednesday morning, we woke up and we realized that we'd hit exactly 3.00% on the dot.
2:14.0	Unfortunately, as of today, on our seven-day rolling average for coronavirus positive in New York City has hit exactly 3.0%.
	...

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