After scrambling to adjust to teaching and feeding students without having them in school, just about everyone planned for a break this week.
Even though trips south were canceled, the planned spring break before Easter would allow educators, parents and students to take a breath and unwind from the whirlwind of the past few weeks. School administrators also had begun working up plans should school not reopen April 15 as Gov. Cuomo has directed.
Instead, Cuomo threw a huge unexpected wrench into all that during his daily briefing last Tuesday, March 31. He announced that schools must continue online instruction this week or lose their state aid funding.
In his letter to Clinton Central School District families later that day, Superintendent Dr. Stephen Grimm said he could not begin to state how disappointed he was at the governor’s decision.
“This is a time to decrease stress, not increase it. I have heard that the rationale had something to do with providing consistency for children and families.
When people are under constant stress, the remedy is certainly not to maintain the same level of stress. I know that our teachers, students, and parents have been working hard right from the start of the closure and I felt that this break was great timing to reset our minds and family routine,’’ Grimm wrote.
Grimm said the district had planned to provide…