"Carranza also talked about the logistics of quickly moving the country's largest public school system to remote learning. The city is rapidly buying 25,000 laptop devices a day to send to households that lack connectivity, and Carranza said Apple was coordinating with the city on acquiring the appropriate technology — the city is hoping to get every student a device by the end of this week, he said.
"Our goal is that within this next week, all students will have a device. Obviously, some students already have a device; we're going to ask them to use those devices," he said.
Another issue was getting internet access to families who weren't online — according to the city comptroller, more than 917,000 households, or 29 percent lack broadband digital access as of 2017. "We know that some houses may not have Wi-Fi. We're working with companies that are going to give free Wi-Fi during this crisis," Carranza said.
The framework for remote learning was still being developed, he said, and would be tailored for each classroom environment.
"It's going to look really different in different places. Some will have online (cameras) where they'll be able to see there's their teachers," Carranza said. "Some are going to be in contact with their teachers, some will have individual independent learning curriculum where they'll be able to watch videos and then answer your questions."
He added, "but the good news as well is that we are rapidly finding out that many of our New York City teachers are already doing some very innovative things in this in this realm."
Pivoting to a sunnier outlook, Carranza said this was a chance for the New York City schools system to shine. "I have no doubt because of the teachers that we have in New York City, that at some point in the future, we're going to look back and we're going to say 'this was our finest hour,'" he said. "'We really did some innovative things and kept our students engaged.'"
