Today we announce a new outdoor learning plan that's going to open up a lot of wonderful possibilities for our kids and for our educators. This will apply to our public schools, our charter schools, private religious schools, learning bridge schools, you name it – one standard for all. Outdoors is one of the things that we know works. We want to give schools the option to do as much outdoors as they can. Starting today, we empower our principals to determine the maximum amount they can do outdoors, how to use school yards and anything on school property that's outdoors, but we're going to go farther. The Department of Education is going to work with principals to open up more space if that's what they think will work for their school community. In certain cases, we can close off streets for a period of time. In certain cases, we can make space available in local parks. It really depends on the circumstance of each school. We're also going to focus on schools that don't happen to have their own outdoor space and look for good options for them. We never know what the weather brings and that's why outdoor learning is not a perfect solution and it won't work every day, but it will certainly add a lot of flexibility to what we're doing and a great alternative for many schools.
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