NYC schools close to stop virus spread

New York City will close the nation’s largest public school system on Monday, sending over 1.1 million children home in hopes of curbing the spread of coronavirus, the city’s mayor announced Sunday, calling it a “very troubling moment.”

A somber Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the decision to close schools through at least April 20 and possibly for the school year, following a growing number of school closures in communities and entire states nationwide and mounting pressure in New York from residents, City Council members and others.

The mayor called it a “very troubling moment, a moment when I’m just distraught at having to take this action, but I became convinced over the course of today that there is no other choice.”

He also announced that there were now five deaths in New York and that he was ordering the end of elective surgeries.

And he said students in kindergarten through 12th grade would begin “remote learning” a week from Monday with teachers being trained on the novel methods beginning Tuesday.

The shutdown affects the city’s nearly 1,900 public schools. Many private schools already have closed. Multiple states, including Pennsylvania, had already announced they were closing schools, as have many cities including Los Angeles, Houston, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.

Mr. de Blasio had been reluctant as recently as Saturday to close the school system because of the consequences for students and families. He worried that health care workers, first responders and other needed workers would have to stay home to care for children, and that hundreds of thousands of poor students could go hungry without their free or reduced-price school meals.