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.”

JUST IN: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announces public schools will remain closed for the rest of the school year, calling it a public health decision: "It's the right thing to do. It clearly will help us save lives." https://t.co/QiZqX8q1Lg pic.twitter.com/jTTdjDh7nV

— ABC News (@ABC) April 11, 2020

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,”

UFT President Michael Mulgrew:
Keeping school buildings closed is unquestionably the right decision. Learning continues. Thanks to the efforts of our educators, remote learning is working in New York City.

— UFT (@UFT) April 11, 2020

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.”

This morning, Mayor de Blasio announced the decision to keep NYC schools closed for the remainder of the school year, but Gov. Cuomo now says there has been “no decision” on the schools: “That’s the mayor’s opinion” https://t.co/0uTY9liWQF pic.twitter.com/jKvyNI6XWm

— CBS News (@CBSNews) April 11, 2020

NYC schools have been closed since March 16th. The school year was set to end on June 26th.