MA Coronavirus: State Not 'Writing Off' School Year Yet

BOSTON — Gov. Charlie Baker said Massachusetts isn't ready to be "writing off" the school year, allowing for some hope students could return to class before the fall.

Schools are currently scheduled to reopen May 4, a date districts are eyeing with skepticism amid the seemingly endless coronavirus crisis. Baker closed schools March 15.

Several states in the U.S. have already canceled the rest of the school year.

"We would be concerned about writing off the rest of the school year," Baker said in his Thursday news briefing.

Baker said if the school year is canceled, the state will have to come up with a way to make up for the lost education.

Baker said he signed three executive orders Thursday morning, each aimed at expanding the state's health care capacity.

One order will allow for an easier transition for foreign-educated doctors to get licensed in Massachusetts, another will allow nursing school graduates and students in their last semester without licenses to practice under supervision, and the third requires insurers to cover medical costs during the treatment of the COVID-19 virus at out-of-network hospitals.

Some such hospitals may be the field sites at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center and Worcester's DCU Center.

The BCEC field hospital, which will be called Boston Hope, will have 1,000 beds. Half of the beds will be for non-critical COVID-19 patients and the other half will be for the homeless population.

Baker also said the state received another 100 ventilators from the federal stockpile, in addition to five ventilators from Boston Children's Hospital.