Hunter Campus Schools Shut Down After Students Test Positive
UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — The Hunter College Campus Schools temporarily suspended in-person classes this week after two kindergarten students tested positive for the coronavirus, the latest snag in the schools' fraught reopening process.
In an email to parents late Wednesday, Campus Schools Director Lisa Siegmann said the school found out about the two students' positive tests earlier that day. Two days earlier, another student in the same class tested positive.
Siegmann said the prestigious public school's 94th Street main building would be closed starting Thursday "out of an abundance of caution," with plans to deep clean any "impacted areas."
Hunter will hold classes remotely until the building reopens on Monday, Siegmann said. (News of the closure was first reported by the New York Times.)
Teachers repeatedly denounced Hunter's reopening plan in the weeks leading up to the Sept. 29 start of in-person classes. They raised alarms about the fortresslike 94th Street building, which mostly lacks windows and has been plagued by ventilation problems in the past, leading to fears that COVID-19 could spread easily indoors.
Staff also complained that Hunter, a K-12 school which is governed by CUNY, rather than the Department of Education, was skirting citywide standards for testing and ventilation. The teachers' union sued CUNY and threatened to strike, but teachers called off the action one day before the start of in-person classes after Hunter administrators made a number of concessions.
To minimize crowding, Hunter is holding some high school classes at the Silberman School of Social Work in East Harlem, where in-person instruction will continue this week, Siegmann said.
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This article originally appeared on the Upper East Side Patch
