Goal

There is substantial debate over the impact of school closure as a mitigation strategy during a pandemic. Closing schools can eliminate an important potential transmission site. However, closing schools is not a trivial decision. Closing schools can cause significant social and economic disruption to the local community. In particular, NYC has high poverty rate with many students depending on their schools for meals. Many of them have working parents who would not be available to provide care if the schools are shut down.

• Question: When does the health risk surpass the social burden?

• Question:

  1. How can we decide on: when, over what geographical scale, and how long to keep schools closed?

  2. How can we decide when to reopen as the situation gets better?