The UFT and City Hall on April 8 negotiated a new protocol for closing classrooms and schools that shifts the focus to preventing in-school outbreaks.

Under the new policy, which takes effect on April 12, classrooms will continue to go fully remote whenever one positive case is detected but entire schools will no longer go remote when two unrelated cases are found.

Now entire schools will move to remote learning for 10 days when four or more cases in different classrooms within one school can be traced to a common exposure within the school in a seven-day period.

"While the mayor has been fixated on removing the two-case rule for some time, we knew we must follow the science and the advice of our independent medical experts during any change in policy," said UFT President Michael Mulgrew in an email to all school-based members. "Our independent medical experts have advised us to shift our attention from unlinked cases within schools to the cases within schools that can be traced to a common source."

The stringent school safety policies that the UFT insisted upon in September have proven successful — keeping the percentage who test positive within New York City schools low throughout the year.

As school staff get more access to the vaccine, the number of adults accounting for new positive cases in New York City public schools is decreasing. But children don’t have access to the vaccine yet, and they are accounting for a greater share of positive cases in schools now, according to Department of Education data.

"Our focus should shift to even greater monitoring inside the schools," Mulgrew said. "We need to maintain a strong pulse on what’s happening in our schools to avoid spread."

The union's goal in the negotiations over the new protocol was to preserve the current level of safety, mitigating spread within schools, while reducing classroom disruptions for school staff, students and families.

Here are the details of the new protocol for classroom and school closures:

• The strong classroom closure rule will remain in effect. If there is a positive case found within a classroom, that classroom must move to remote learning for 10 days.
• If any school has two or more positive cases in different classrooms within seven days, in addition to moving those classrooms to remote learning for 10 days, testing will be increased to 40 percent for that school building for the next weekly testing cycle.
• If four or more cases are found in different classrooms within one school in a seven-day period, and those cases can be traced to a common exposure within the school, the entire school will move to remote learning for 10 days.
• Co-located schools within buildings will be considered separate from each other, as long as the schools can prove that there is no physical interaction with the other schools.

“These new safety protocols will take us through June and give us more consistency while continuing to keep us all safe,” said Mulgrew.