ALBANY – Governor Andrew Cuomo announced late Friday morning that schools throughout New York will remain closed for the remainder of the school year. As part of his New York on Pause executive order, the governor shut down schools in mid-March in order to slow the spread of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus.
Since the closure, lessons and education efforts have continued through online instruction and assignments. That will continue through the end of the school year in mid June.
Locally, Jamestown Public Schools already announced it had developed a plan to continue educating students off site for the remainder of the year.
The governor is also asking all school districts to come up with reopening plans, although there has yet to be decision on whether or not schools will even reopen for sure this fall. The future of summer school is also uncertain as of Friday.
The governor also noted that between Thursday and Friday morning, 289 more people died as a result of COVID-19 with 22 of them being nursing home residents.
Cuomo said that numbers are still too high but also noted that social distancing actions taken up by New Yorkers has helped to slow the spread and stopped an estimated 100,000 people from being hospitalized.
On Thursday the governor announced the state is now aggressively pursuing contact tracing to contain COVID-19 and is looking to employ as many as 17,000 people to track and mitigate the spread of the disease.
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