Long Beach Schools Start 2021 With Remote Learning

LONG BEACH, NY — Long Beach students are starting off the new year at home. Citing a sharp increase in coronavirus cases in the area, the school district opted to go remote for the start of the week.

According to Superintendent Dr. Jennifer Gallagher, all classes for the Long Beach School District will be remote through Wednesday. If all goes well, in-person classes will resume on Thursday.

Since Christmas, the district has had more than 40 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, Gallagher wrote in a letter to families. And the Barrier Island's seven-day increase in cases was the highest in the county, she said. The district is also concerned about a possible spike in cases from New Year's Eve.

We are well aware that keeping students home is a real inconvenience for some families and is certainly not ideal for our students," Gallagher wrote. "With that in mind, we did not make this decision lightly. Keeping our buildings shut for just those three additional days gives us a full week between New Year’s Eve and opening, which we hope will ensure that any holiday-related cases will already be identified and quarantined. We are hoping that closing for three days now will prevent us from having to close buildings for longer periods later."

Coronavirus cases surged across Nassau County in December. In 2020, Nassau County recorded 89,470 cases of the coronavirus. Of those, 28,298 were from December alone — 31.6 percent of the total. Long Beach has confirmed more than 2,000 cases of the virus, many in the last few weeks, which is among the highest in the county.