New York State governor Andrew Cuomo and New
York City mayor Bill de Blasio have locked horns once again, this time over
whether school buildings in the nation’s largest district would close for the
rest of the year, with classes continuing online.
De Blasio said in a news briefing that public
school sites in the city’s 1.1 million-student school district would shutter
for the rest of the academic year to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Soon afterward, Cuomo said at his own
briefing that the decision was his to make.
“It is my legal authority in this situation,
yes,” Cuomo said.
De Blasio, like Cuomo a Democrat, had said
that it was not an easy decision to close school buildings in favor of online
learning, but that “it is the right decision and it’s also a decision made a
little clearer by the fact that the distance learning is working more and more
every day.”
The goal, he said, is to reopen school sites
by September, adding that high school graduates may have to go without a
commencement ceremony.
But Cuomo said school closings would have to
be coordinated with districts surrounding the city.
“So I understand the mayor’s position, which
is he wants to close them until June, and we may do that, but we’re going to do
it in a coordinated sense with the other localities,” Cuomo said. “It makes no
sense for one locality to take an action that’s not coordinated with the
others.”
When a reporter suggested that the mixed
messages would confuse parents, Cuomo said, “We just clarified it. It’s not
going to be decided in the next few days because we don’t know.”
Adding to the confusion, an email from the
city to parents was issued while Cuomo spoke, advising of the extended school
closing.
“NYC school students will continue with
Remote Learning for the rest of the 2019-2020 school year,” it said.
The dispute was the latest bout in a
long-running grudge match between the two elected officials, who have failed to
maintain a united front in the face of a pandemic.
When de Blasio said last month that city
residents should prepare for a “shelter-in-place” order, Cuomo countered that
the city didn’t have the power to make such a declaration.
Days later, Cuomo announced a “New York state
on pause” order directing nonessential businesses to close and telling people
to stay 6 feet away from others when in public. The order sounded much like
shelter-in-place, a term de Blasio has continued to use.
De Blasio spokeswoman Freddi Goldstein
alluded to the earlier dispute on Twitter, saying Cuomo’s reaction to de
Blasio’s school announcement was “reminiscent of how he reacted when the Mayor
called for a shelter in place. We were right then and we’re right now.”
Cuomo addressed the school issue as he
released numbers showing that 783 deaths from COVID-19 were recorded statewide
on Friday, the fifth day in a row that the toll topped 700.
The new figures raised the number of
coronavirus-related deaths in the state to 8,627.
“These are just incredible numbers depicting
incredible loss and pain,” Cuomo said.
The governor, whose national profile has
risen as his virus briefings have become must-see TV, said again Saturday that
he is not interested in running for president.
When a reporter said some Democrats would
prefer Cuomo to former Vice President Joe Biden as their party’s presidential
nominee, Cuomo said, “That is on one hand flattering. On the other hand, it is
irrelevant.”
“I have no political agenda. Period,” he
said. “I’m not running for president. I’m not running for vice president. I’m
not running anywhere. I’m not going to Washington. I’m staying right here.”
De Blasio ran for the 2020 Democratic
nomination but dropped out early in the race.
Cuomo’s remarks Saturday were embraced by
authorities on Long Island, which has seen its own surge in coronavirus cases.
“Everybody wants to get back to normal as soon as possible, but we have to take
a data-driven, regional approach,” Laura Curran, the Nassau County executive,
said in a statement.
“If this pandemic has taught us one thing,”
added Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, “it is that we are one New York
and all in this together.”
School buildings in New York City, the U.S.
epicenter of the pandemic, have been closed since March 16. All school
buildings in the state have been closed since March 18 following a Cuomo
executive order.
The school closings were initially announced
for a few weeks back before the virus’s full impact was known. New York’s
school year lasts through late June.
A massive effort to move instruction online
has met mixed success in the city, where many low-income students lack Wi-Fi
and devices for connecting to their virtual classrooms.
De Blasio said tens of thousands of tablets
and laptops have been loaned to students who needed them and the remaining
students who lack devices for online learning will get them by the end of
April.
De Blasio had resisted closing schools 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 free school
meals.
Since then, the city has set up food
distribution sites and centers where essential front-line workers can drop
their children off.
Authorities in some other locales, including
the states of Virginia and Pennsylvania, previously announced that schools
would close for the rest of the year.
Source:
Associated Press
