New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio disagree over whether the city's 1.1 million-pupil public school system will be closed for the rest of the school year during the coronavirus outbreak.
The mayor announced Saturday morning that the schools would remain shuttered, but later in the day, Cuomo, a fellow Democrat, said that's not the case saying he as governor has the legal authority to open and close the schools "in this situation." The governor said any decision about closing or re-opening schools should be done regionally in the New York City metropolitan area and if possible in coordination with New Jersey and Connectict.
Governor Cuomo has ordered schools statewide closed until at least April 29.
Public schools in New York City, the U.S. epicenter of the virus outbreak, have been closed since March 16. A massive effort to move instruction online has met with mixed success in the city, where many low-income students lack Wi-Fi and devices for connecting to their virtual classrooms.
De Blasio 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.
Authorities in some other locales, including the states of Virginiaand Pennsylvania, have previously announced that schools will be shuttered for the rest of the year.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
