SCHOOLS OUT
Many New Jersey and all PA schools closing for at least two weeks, events cancelled »
Gov. Phil Murphy said Friday it was a “when and not an if” that all 650 school districts across New Jersey will close because of the spread of the coronavirus.
Township schools in Hamilton and Robbinsville were among 354 districts statewide that shuttered schools to try to contain spread of the global pandemic.
At least one district closed following a positive presumed test of someone in the district, said Dr. Lamont Repollet, commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Education.
He didn’t identify the district where the person tested positive.
For now, closure decisions remain up to the districts, the governor said.
Many public schools had already imposed early dismissal or closures, and the governor said it was “inevitable” that Garden State public schools would face extended closures as health officials grapple with the coronavirus outbreak.
Trenton Public Schools had yet to pull the trigger on an extended school closure as of 6 p.m., but Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora told The Trentonian the city was preparing for a possible closure.
“We are proactively working toward the inevitability that every district will be closed for a prolonged period of time. Each district and each community has their own set of challenges and realities,” Murphy said.
More Cases
Also on Friday, Murphy announced 21 new positive coronavirus cases in New Jersey, bringing the total number of cases to 50.
That includes the death of 69-year-old Bergen man, the county with the most cases of the respiratory illness in the state with 15.
Another 80 potential cases are under investigation at the state public health lab.
State officials revealed the first presumed positive case for Mercer County.
A 49-year-old woman who works at Princeton University tested positive for COVID-19, Princeton officials confirmed.
She attended a house party at Princeton on Feb. 29 with two others from the Boston area who also tested positive for coronavirus.
“This news was not surprising,” Mercer County Executive Brian Hughes, who held a conference call with local mayors Friday afternoon, said in a statement. “Most counties in New Jersey are now seeing presumptive positive cases of COVID-19, and we need to be prepared for more such cases in Mercer County.”
Hughes declared a state of emergency Thursday following the lead of Gov. Murphy, who recommended a ban on public gatherings of more than 250 people, to deal with the spread of the virus.
Hamilton officials on Thursday postponed the Hamilton Saint Patrick’s Day Parade and other highprofile events scheduled due to pandemic.
The Princeton woman experienced mild illness March 3 and reported attending two events, a March 7 dance festival in Staten Island and a meeting March 9 at the Princeton Medical Center, after her symptoms arose.
She has been isolated at home since March 9, officials said.
“We have contacted the event coordinators for both locations to further identify any possible exposure,” Princeton health officer Jeff Grosser said in a statement. “The health department was notified of presumptive positive results for this individual from the New Jersey Department of Health’s Public Environmental Health Laboratory today, March 13, and is awaiting confirmatory results from the CDC.”
The Princeton case is separate from the case of a Robbinsville cardiologist and his wife who tested presumptively positive for the illness. The couple lives in Burlington County.
The 62-year-old doctor works at the Mercer Bucks Cardiology, which has a suite inside the West Lake Office building on Union Street.
The doctor and his wife have been in isolation since March 4. The cardiology office was closed and cleaned, officials said.
For most people, the virus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death.
The vast majority of people recover. According to the World Health Organization, people with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three to six weeks to recover.
Murphy said the federal Health and Human Services Department notified the state it’s sending 84,000 respirators, 200,000 surgical masks and 35,000 face shields.
The state’s hospitals are facing dwindling supplies, according to state officials.
Murphy also said state regulators have suspended the ability of utilities to shut off services to residents during the outbreak. He is also pushing back driver’s license and vehicle registration deadlines by two months.
School Closures
As fears grew of the spread of the virus, New Jersey was taking a more tempered approach on school closures than one of its neighbors.
In Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Wolf announced all schools, kindergarten through 12th grade, would close for the next 10 school days. Officials will decide after that whether to reopen schools.
In Robbinsville, beginning Monday schools will remain closed through April, with all after-school, evening and weekend activities canceled, Superintendent
Kathie Foster said.
Robbinsville officials will decide during the weeklong spring break vacation, starting April 6, whether to reopen April 14.
“This was a multi-faceted decision made in collaboration with the county health officer and the Mercer County superintendents and based upon growing research that indicates that social distancing is the only strategy that currently impacts the eventual spread of COVID-19,” Foster wrote in a letter posted on the district’s website. “Therefore, the best time to close schools is before the spread happens.
“We know that this will be challenging for our families and for our staff. What has kept me up over the past few nights is recognizing the furious pace that this virus can spread. In good conscience, we feel a responsibility to try to mitigate the growing number of presumptive and potential official cases of the coronavirus. Although we do not have a confirmed case yet, if we wait until one is identified it will be too late to stop the spread of the highly contagious virus.”
Following suit later in the day, Hamilton closed schools through March 27, moving to remote learning while schools are shut.
Hamilton will arrange for students and families in need to get food services while schools are closed with pick-up service at Hamilton High School West, North, and East as well as Sunnybrae, Kuser, and Wilson Elementary Schools. Families will be able to pick up five days worth of food once per week between 10 a.m. and noon on Tuesdays, March 17 and 24.
West Windsor, Plainsboro, Princeton, Hopewell and Lawrence school districts also plan to enact online learning, Foster said.
Trenton Public Schools, which closed for two days this week to clean the facilities and allow teachers to prepare lesson plans if schools are closed longer, was still formalizing plans on how to proceed.
Mayor Reed Gusicora told The Trentonian on Friday that “no decision” had been made about whether to close Trenton schools.
He planned to meet with directors, superintendent Ronald Lee and other city leaders Friday afternoon and hoped to have an update later in the day.
School officials are figuring out what to do about the roughly 259,000 of 1.4 million students statewide without remote learning access, Murphy said.
The Hamilton district has 11,729 students and about 1,000 certified staff members.
Superintendent Scott Rocco said 17 percent of district students lack a device or Wi-Fi connectivity to participate in online learning, pointing to the governor’s concern about the impact of extended school closures.
Hamilton council announced they would offer a telephone conference option for residents to attend council meetings virtually rather than in person, though council meetings are still planned to be open to the public. Council’s announcement urged residents to join the meeting via phone, and would allow for public comment on the phone. Call in information will be available on the township website prior to the meeting.
“You gotta do it responsibly,” Murphy said. “We have to do it so that every kid and every family is taken care of so we don’t leave families behind.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report