Governor Gavin Newsom said that schools in California are likely to close for what remains of the school year.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-17/schools-closures-mobilize-meals
“California public schools are likely to be closed for the remainder of the school year in response to the escalating spread of coronavirus, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday afternoon.
“I don’t want to mislead you,” he said to parents and educators during an afternoon press conference.
“Nearly all school districts in the state, 98.8%, are closed in response to the coronavirus pandemic, Newsom said. The state education department is assembling detailed guidelines on how schools can attempt to continue teaching 6.1 million students out of their classrooms in the weeks and months ahead.
“The announcement comes as the Los Angeles school district on Tuesday was ramping up “grab and go” food services to help feed more than half a million children displaced by the closing of schools due to the coronavirus outbreak.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Holy cow!
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It makes sense to me to close schools. I teach in Nashville, Tennessee. The high school where I teach has almost 2,300 students and a staff of 150 adults. There is no way we can keep the building sanitized. We only have 7-8 custodians. They can’t sanitize 175 classrooms on a daily basis. Many of my students are being raised by grandparents. The best scenario is to close schools for the rest of the year. The district has a program to make sure that kids continue to get fed breakfast and lunch.
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I agree. And even daily sanitizing isn’t enough–it would require sanitizing laptops, desks, and surfaces at the end of each period (every 50 minutes in many cases), before the next class of students enters the room. And bathrooms, beakers, test tubes, cooking equipment, art supplies, auto shop equipment, weight room, bathrooms, etc. Even if that were possible, that’s a lot of chemicals to spray all over the place.
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I didn’t know the governor had a crystal ball. Online schooling, according to the article, is the solution for education to deal with the novel coronavirus? Like online charters, for example? The lowest of quality in schools that the tech industry has spent decades trying to ‘scale up’? How dare I be contrarian at a time like this, but I definitely think skepticism is required here.
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ditto
The governor said parents will be homeschooling.
While schools were shutting down, this quiet post 4 days ago.
The post:
“Bill Gates
Co-chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
I have made the decision to step down from both of the public boards on which I serve – Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway – to dedicate more time to philanthropic priorities including global health and development, education, and my increasing engagement in tackling climate change. The leadership at the Berkshire companies and Microsoft has never been stronger, so the time is right to take this step.”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/focusing-my-time-bill-gates
What’s Bill up to now? The media coverage that followed said nothing about the “education” piece. Other recent articles about Bill indicate he’s most interested in AI. Watch this news video about AI. The volumes of data collected by Distance Learning will be compiled, cleaned and used.
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/02/28/how-artificial-intelligence-is-disrupting-industries-across-the-board.html
Privacy? Doubt it!
Microsoft expanded their AI reserch years ago. Since then, Bill’s invested with other AI firms. He doesn’t care about what’s he’s done to destroy public education…or the children. Power and money have no bounds. He will go on to profit off the minds, souls and backs of teachers and students.
https://news.microsoft.com/2016/09/29/microsoft-expands-artificial-intelligence-ai-efforts-with-creation-of-new-microsoft-ai-and-research-group/
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so much out-of-touch noise now coming from many politicians: much like the “let them eat cake” concept. When children cannot access the Internet equally — some homes do not have any access at all — telling the kids and parents to do what cannot be done is far from useful
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