Update on Washington School Closures

Washington state's Gov. Jay Inslee went live at 2:30 p.m. PST today to talk about school closures. He stated, within the first few minutes of the live, that all K-12 schools in the state of Washington would be closed until the end of school in June, meaning students will not be going back to "traditional schooling" for the rest of this school year. Inslee goes on to say that it may be possible to come back for some days, like for school graduation, if the curve flattens more and people are willing to work to stop the spread of the virus. To seniors in high school, Inslee says that their grades will not be affected by the closure, as long as they put in effort as well. The state has already pushed school districts to have online models for learning by last week. Inslee also says that, though the curve may start going down soon, we need to keep being careful until the it goes down completely. About AP testing, Washington state's schools superintendent, Chris Reykdal, says that the AP testing window has been pushed back, the tests are to be taken at home, and the people in charge of AP testing are working on making the tests about 45 minutes long. Reykdal also says that this pandemic should make people realize the importance of learning, rather than things like standardized testing.