Update: Soon after the announcement, Governor Cuomo said that there has been no decision made. We shall see what the status is as New York City mayors have legal authority to shut down schools.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced this morning that nation’s largest public school system will be closed through the end of the current academic year.
It’s been almost a month since they were first shutdown and transitioned into remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting shutdown across the city and state.
Hundreds of thousands of Bronx students along with the rest of the city’s 1.1 million school children will lose out over 3 months of in-class instruction due to the pandemic.
The New York Times writes:
Roughly 1,800 schools across the city’s five boroughs have scrambled to adjust to remote learning since they were initially closed on March 16, a sudden shift that has presented educators with perhaps the largest challenge of their careers and turned well over 1 million parents into part-time teachers.
The first few weeks of online learning have already transformed the relationship between the city’s students, parents, and educators, who have come to rely on each other in ways unfathomable even a month ago.
They add:
The loss of learning and social interaction brought on by the months of school closures are incalculable, and the full consequences of the shutdown will never be completely known. But the virus has already changed the school system even beyond the mass closures: The economic crisis created by the pandemic has led to significant budget cuts for schools.
This will be disastrous for our already struggling students and perhaps particularly students living in shelters as The Bronx has the highest rates of such children.
What will happen to our kids?
Read the full article here.
