NEW YORK _ Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in the latest round of his ongoing feud with New York City's mayor, gave Bill de Blasio an "F" for announcing the city's school buildings would remained shuttered through June.
It took just two hours for the governor to charge that the mayor had overstepped his bounds with the Saturday morning declaration, and Cuomo quickly dismissed the remark regarding the 2019-20 school year as de Blasio's "opinion" and nothing more.
"He didn't close them and he can't open them," the governor declared.
"I understand the mayor's position, which is he wants to close them until June. And we may do that," Cuomo said. "But we're going to do it in a coordinated sense with the other localities."
The latest bout of bickering between New York's best-known frenemies began when de Blasio held a Saturday morning news conference announcing that the city's 1.1 million students across the five boroughs would not finish the current school year in their classrooms.
After Cuomo contradicted the mayor, a war of words commenced _ with City Hall spokesman Freddie Goldstein sharing that de Blasio had both called and texted the governor about the planned announcement.
"We wanted parents and teachers to have certainty as early as possible," tweeted Goldstein. "Our staff(s) also spoke. We told the public. Those are the facts. Let's keep kids and their parents first."
But Cuomo managed to get the last word _ even though it came four days earlier. The governor signed an executive order this past Tuesday requiring all schools statewide to "remain closed through April 29, at which time the continued closure shall be re-evaluated."
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams expressed his aggravation with the latest dust-up between the upstate and downstate Democrats.
"I don't have the time," he tweeted Saturday. "I don't have the patience for petty back-and-forths in the middle of a deadly pandemic. @NYGovCuomo and @NYCMayor: Cut the crap."
While New York state and the city remain the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the two politicians have not appeared together in weeks _ instead holding separate daily news conferences. Even when the USNS Comfort recently arrived in Manhattan to treat ailing New Yorkers, the pair opted to address the media separately.
De Blasio, in a Saturday morning video news conference, ordered the nation's largest school system closed for the remainder of the school year as the coronavirus pandemic continued.
"We will not be able to bring our schools back before the end of the school year," de Blasio said in a video press conference. "There was nothing easy about this decision."
De Blasio previously ordered city schools closed until April 20, following spring break, but said that goal became unattainable as time passed.
City schools should be able to reopen in September, he said. And the city, along with the Department of Education, was considering its options for end-of-the-school-year Regents exams and the system's 75,000 graduating students.
"We don't want them to be robbed of their future or their joyous moment, but we don't know if we can have any type of traditional graduation ceremony," said de Blasio of the Class of 2020.
Online classes will continue with more educators and expanded hours added to the remote learning system, de Blasio said, followed by more creative at-home programming in the next few weeks.
Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza and United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew both agreed with the mayor's call to shut down for the year.
"School buildings closed is unquestionably the right decision," said Mulgrew. "Learning continues. Thanks to the efforts of our educators, remote learning is working in New York City."
