#Archdiocese of NY demands city pay for COVID-19 testing in schools

The Archdiocese of New York is demanding that the city pay for and administer COVID-19 testing for students in Catholic schools in the Big Apple’s coronavirus yellow zones.

Under state guidelines, the only way the Catholic schools can stay open in the virus hot spots is if they test 20 percent of their students and staff at least once a week and the infection rate comes back low enough, archdiocese officials said.

The archdiocese includes Manhattan, The Bronx and Staten Island — with a large swath of the latter locked in a yellow zone that includes 10,000 Catholic-school students at 25 elementary and high schools.

The mandatory testing rule applies to public schools in such zones, too.

But while the city Department of Education “has implemented an on-site testing regime at the public schools … the DOE has failed to provide the children attending Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of New York with these same critical health and testing services,” the archdiocese’s lawyer, James Herschlein, wrote in an e-mail to city schools Chancellor Richard Carranza on Sunday.

“Instead, the DOE has identified for the Catholic Schools testing ‘kits’ that, apparently, the DOE proposes the Catholic Schools purchase and administer — with unidentified and unavailable personnel and with no funding by the DOE,” the letter says.

This violates the law, according to the archdiocese — which gave the city a deadline of 4 p.m. Monday to confirm it will provide the requested testing or, “The Catholic Schools will have no choice but to pursue all remedies available under the law.

“What the DOE has provided in services and facilities for the COVID-19 testing of the children of the Catholic Schools is indisputably far inferior to the services and facilities it is providing for the COVID-19 testing of children attending public schools,” Herschlein says in the e-mail.

“Section 912 of the Education Law clearly requires that school boards must provide children attending nonpublic schools within their districts with ‘all of the health and welfare services’ they provide to their public school students, including ‘the administration of health screening tests.’ ”

The lawyer said the archdiocese has repeatedly asked for equal treatment in terms of school testing in yellow zones, to no avail.

DOE spokeswoman Miranda Barbot told The Post in a statement, “We are communicating with the archdiocese to help them develop a testing program that would include free tests from the City.”

“These conversations have been ongoing since Staten Island was first designated a yellow zone, and testing could begin next week.”