All K-12 Schools In Kansas Are Closed Until The End Of The School Year And More States May Do The Same

Governor Laura Kelly announced the closure on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly ordered all K-12 schools in the state to close for the remainder of the school year due to the coronavirus.

KSN News Wichita @KSNNews

Governor Laura Kelly announced Tuesday that all Kansas K-12 schools will be closed for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year due to the coronavirus. https://t.co/0M9bXVazfQ

10:01 PM - 17 Mar 2020

Public schools in 38 states and the District of Columbia have temporarily closed — according to a tally by Education Week. However, Kansas is the first state to announce closure for the remainder of the school year.

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The National Center for Education Statistics states that there are more than 98,000 public schools in the US and about 50 million public school students.

In the coming weeks, we may start to see other states closing until the end of the school year as well. On CNN’s State of the Union, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said, “We’ve informed the superintendents why we’ve closed schools for three weeks and…the odds are this is going to go on a lot longer, and it would not surprise me at all if schools did not open again this year.”

CNN

And, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio stated that schools in the state may close until the end of the year as well — and possibly longer.

MSNBC

He said, “I fear that this crisis is going to start to crescendo through April, May before it ever gets better. The classic ‘it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.’ I think that’s a hard atmosphere to reopen schools in. ... I wanted to get people acclimated to a new reality that this is very well going to take us through the school year and maybe beyond because it’s not just the sheer track of the disease. It’s all the other dislocations we have to deal with.”

You can stay up-to-date on school closures here.