PHOENIX — Arizona Governor Doug Ducey and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman announced Monday that in an effort to keep students and school staff safe during the coronavirus pandemic, schools across the state will close for the rest of the school year.
The state had already canceled classes through April 10, but this means students will be learning from a distance until this summer. It also means graduations, proms, spring sports and more are now canceled.
This news has left many families, from elementary school to high school, scrambling and trying to figure out what to do next.
Some parents might have been planning for this, but with an outside hope that school might come back.
12 News caught up with a couple of families and asked one simple question, what are you going to do now?
"We're all in survival mode here," mother Autumn Wallace said.
Along with her normal role as a stay-at-home mom, Wallace has had to add work-at-home and teach-at-home to her title. She feels the state should have made this decision faster.
"They should have just done that initially to give teachers more time to prepare."
As Arizona schools close, parents are struggling to figure out what to do next.
Normally, there would be at least two months of school left. Now, kids will have to be home-schooled by many parents who never thought about doing that.
"To work full time from home and teach their kids is just... I don't know how they're gonna do it, but thankfully, I have a few hours a day where I can work in the afternoon or just stay up late," mother Carrie Ducharme said. She has a full-time job and her husband works in law enforcement, meaning both of them are still working.
But now, school is closed and Ducharme is home with her 13-year-old kids. She says she doesn't know what to do.
"I mean, I just don't think it's OK to leave them home alone and expect them to educate themselves for 40 hours a week."
Many parents are in the same position. Some are unable to work from home and others will struggle to figure out how to do two jobs at once.
"I'm probably gonna try to use (paid time off) to cover at least one other day a week so that the kids would have to be alone part-time," Ducharme said.
But, it's not just parents this affecting, but students and teachers, like Phoenix Camelback High School teacher Garrett Smith.
"I told each of my classes as they left the door I'll see you after spring break and have a safe vacation," Smith said. "But, of course, I won't be able to see them in person."
Garrett's retiring after teaching for 30 years. He teaches U.S. history at Camelback High.
"I don't like goodbyes, so I was kind of dreading these last few months at school," Smith said.
And with schools now going online, teachers are teaching remotely, and students are figuring out how to attend class at home.
"We're just starting to get set up and prepared for online school and all that," Glendale Ironwood High School senior Joshua Leyvas said.
Leyvas was supposed to be savoring his senior year, but now, all of that has changed.
"(I've) been working 18 years for it and like especially because I would be the second one to graduate in my family," Leyvas said. "It's really surreal. You don't get to have your last prom, your last student assembly..."
Leyvas will still graduate, just probably not with pomp and circumstance, and Garrett Smith will still get to say goodbye – just online and not in person.
"It's spared me some of the pain of having to say goodbye to people, but at the same time it's a weird way to end a teaching career," Smith said.
With the governor's announcement that schools will not reopen, the reality is setting in that this is not a sprint – but a marathon.
