NorthJersey.com’s Hannan Adely and Ashley Balcerzak report
As New Jersey rushes into a mass experiment with online instruction thanks to the coronavirus, Michelle Polo-Thorpe worries that her students will be left behind.
“I have 30 students in my homeroom class and only 11 have a cellphone,” said Polo-Thorpe, a seventh-grade English teacher in Paterson. “We have many students who are new to the country. They don’t have access to a computer outside of school or the public library.”
Gov. Phil Murphy ordered all public schools in the state to close by Wednesday, shifting 1.4 million pupils to remote learning as New Jersey races to contain the virus. But the vast majority of schools had already shut their doors by the start of the week, with a mix of online learning and self-study taking hold in homes across the state.