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with this new modeling, with the dynamic nature of the models that we've been using for now many, many weeks. It seems, I think, self evident that we should not prepare to bring our Children back into the school setting. And that's why I was very pleased. Yesterday we've been working collaboratively with the superintendent of public education, Tony Thurman and Linda Darling Hammond. I'm very pleased with the guidance the superintendent put out. Been very honest with all of you for weeks now, my belief in my expectation. But I think based on that modeling should be clear that the right thing to do for our Children, the right thing to do for the parents, for households, for the communities which they reside is to make sure that we are preparing today to set our school system up where we're increasing class time, but increasing it at home and fulfilling our obligations through distance learning on and other mechanisms to make sure that we're educating our kids but not doing so physically on school sites

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California public schools are expected to remain physically closed for the rest of the school year as the state works to slow the spread of the coronavirus outbreak, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday. Instead, schools will be teaching from afar via distance learning. At a news conference Wednesday, California Superintendent Tony Thurmond acknowledged that the pivot to online learning will be difficult but “we have to rise to that challenge.”In a letter to the state’s superintendents Tuesday, Thurmond said these are “unprecedented times.”“Due to the current safety concerns and needs for ongoing social distancing it currently appears that our students will not be able to return to school campuses before the end of the school year," Thurmond wrote.It's not a mandate, but it will give school districts the cover to do what many already felt was necessary, said Troy Flint, spokesperson for the California School Boards Association.Flint said Thurmond's letter gives districts the "security they feel they need to make a decision and explain that to their communities.”To aid in the online learning effort, Newsom said that Google will add 100,000 access points to boost Wi-Fi and broadband capacity across the state."And not only access to the internet, but quality access to the internet. (Google is) providing a minimum three months free access to high quality, to broadband throughout the state of California. Those 100,000 points will help us substantially address the digital divide issues, the rural issues, the equity issues that are at play, even in the best of times," Newsom said. Roughly 20% of California students lacked internet access at home when schools closed weeks ago amid the outbreak. Districts have found resources to cut that by half, said Linda Darling-Hammond, president of California's State Board of Education. | RELATED | Dates to know: When your kids start 'distance learning' As of Wednesday, there were 774 coronavirus patients in intensive care units in California, Newsom said. “That’s the number I wake up to, that I’m most focused on as governor of the state of California – the number of people in ICU and the number of people hospitalized in the state of California. Those numbers represent our most urgent need in terms of keeping people alive and keeping people healthy and safe in the state of California," he said.Newsom said that the 774 number is roughly “a quadrupling compared to where we were, just six days ago.”There have been an estimated 34,000 applications to the new California Health Corps., an initiative to boost the state’s health care workforce by recruiting health care professionals, health care students close to getting their degrees and recent retirees. -- The Associated Press contributed reporting to this story. W2lmcmFtZSBzcmM9Imh0dHBzOi8vZDJjbXZicTdzeHgzM2ouY2xvdWRmcm9udC5uZXQvZW1haWwvcHJvZF9jb3JvbmF2aXJ1c19pZnJhbWVfYXJ0aWNsZS5odG1sIiBoZWlnaHQ9IjQxNCIgc3R5bGU9IndpZHRoOjEwMCU7Ym9yZGVyOm5vbmU7b3ZlcmZsb3c6aGlkZGVuIiBzY3JvbGxpbmc9Im5vIiBmcmFtZWJvcmRlcj0iMCIgYWxsb3dUcmFuc3BhcmVuY3k9InRydWUiXVsvaWZyYW1lXe+7vw==