New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said New York City public schools will remain closed for the rest of the school year. Saturday morning he said, “There was nothing easy about this decision… It is painful, but it will save lives and guarantee that the strategies that we have put in place are working.”
The mayor went on to say, “Next school year will have to be the greatest academic school year New York City will ever have because everyone is going to be playing catch up,”
But there is now a dispute over whether the NYC mayor has the power to close schools. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says “you can’t make the decision just within New York City without coordinating the decision with the whole Metropolitan region because it all works together... I want to coordinate all those opinions and re-open them at the same time.”
NYC schools have been closed since March 16th. The school year was set to end on June 26th.