Will schools reopen? When? How? To find out, we’ll have to wait for the state’s 732 school districts to file their reopening plans, which are due in Albany on July 31.
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo said Wednesday, despite the president’s assertions, that decisions on reopening schools are up to the states. He said he will decide in early August, after consultation with key stakeholders, whether, when, and how to reopen New York’s schools.
“We will open the schools if it is safe to open the schools,” he said during a media briefing. “Everybody wants the schools open — everybody.”
New York’s 4,429 public schools and 351 charter schools serve about 2.6 million students and employ about 212,300 teachers. All schools switched over to remote learning during the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak in March. School buildings remain closed.
“School reopening also ties to the economic reopening, right?” he said. “Because you can’t really reopen the economy fully if you have the schools closed. Schools are important, not just for education, socialization of young people, we don’t even know what this means to have kids who are out of school for this period of time.”
“So, yes, we all want to open schools. But we want it to be safe,” he said. “I am not going to ask anyone to put their child in a situation that I would not put my child in, and that’s how I make these decisions. So, we’ll get the data and we’ll make that decision in August. But just to be clear, the federal government has no legal authority when it comes to school openings.”
