Nearly half of New York school in quarantine due to teacher infected with COVID

Exposure to a teacher infected with coronavirus forced nearly half of an Upper West Side elementary school into quarantine this week, sending dozens of families into plummeting, The Post has learned.

Hundreds of students in more than a dozen separate classes at PS 87 have been coerced into distance learning since administrators determined the children were near a COVID-19 positive teacher, reported declared school sources.

Those affected represent about half of the total school population.

The mass quarantine came shortly after the publication of a city hall policy change aimed at minimizing classroom and school closures.

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced shortly after the city’s schools reopened that masked and socially estranged children could stay at their desks if exposed to a classmate who tested positive for the virus.

But there was a caveat to the new decree: Children exposed to infected adult staff members, whether masked and kept away, should always be quarantined.

Sources from PS 87 said parents were unaware of this and had assumed their children were relatively safe from large-scale closures this year.

“I think the feeling here is that we are all doing our part with the kids,” said one parent. “We use masks. Moving away. And after all that, half of the school is home.

But the DOE said current policy follows guidelines from the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to reduce shutdowns while protecting against epidemics.

“The safety of our students and staff is our top priority, and our quarantine guidelines align with those of the CDC to keep our schools healthy and our children in school,” said Nathaniel Styer, representative of the DOE. “Our excellent educators are ready to provide distance education, and we are helping schools return students safely in person and learn as soon as possible.”

Styer said the policy allows children to get tested after five days and return to school in eight days if they are negative.

As of September 13, 1,735 schoolchildren in the city have tested positive for COVID-19, along with 760 staff members.

There are currently 361 full class closures in effect, according to city figures.