Coronavirus Pandemic: NYC schools shut for rest of the year

At least 1.1 million-pupil public school system in the New York City will be shut for the rest of the school year as the metropolis fights to contain the coronavirus pandemic, Mayor NYC Bill de Blasio announced on Saturday.

Public schools in NYC, the US epicenter of the virus outbreak, have been shut since March 16.

An enormous struggle to move instruction online has met with mixed success in the city, where many low-income students lack internet connecctivity for connecting to their virtual classrooms.

Mayor NYC resisted closing schools even as the city recorded its first deaths from the coronavirus, saying “he feared that health care workers would have to stay home to care for children and that hundreds of thousands of poor students would go hungry without their free school meals”.