Governor DeSantis announces K-12 schools will continue distance learning for the rest of the school year

At his press conference today, Governor DeSantis announced that K-12 schools will remain closed for the rest of the school year. “We spoke with a lot of folks throughout the state. There were some differing opinions: some parents were not interested in their kids going back; [for] some others, it’s been tough around the house, they would have liked to have seen them go back; but I think as we looked at the clock and we looked to see what it would look like, we’ve got pretty good momentum for distance learning. It’s obviously not the ideal situation, but given where we are in the school year, we felt that was the best decision to go forward.”

When asked what “pushed [him] over the edge” to make the decision, DeSantis said, “We obviously weren’t going to do it on May 4th, so it would have been probably the last couple weeks of May. We were doing the distance learning… academically, would there have been a huge benefit? I think most people thought not. Now look, I’m sensitive to–I mean, a lot of our kids haven’t seen friends for a while, so this has had social costs to it, and I want to figure out a way to overcome that. I think in the next phase, kids will have a little bit more to be able to do, but I think there was just logistical things, I think you had kind of a division amongst folks, whether this was a good idea or not, and I think the last thing you want to do is force everyone in school, then have half the kids not show up because their parents didn’t want, have teachers not want to do it… It was an easier decision for me to make, knowing that we’ve done so well with the distance learning.”