New York City’s public schools will close tomorrow and shift to remote learning, officials announced Sunday morning as the city braced for hours of heavy snowfall from a major storm heading into the school week.

“As snowfall begins to blanket our city and conditions become hazardous, closing school buildings is a necessary step to keep New Yorkers safe,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a statement.

Officials made the call shortly before 9 a.m., giving families a chance to make child care arrangements and teachers to prepare new lesson plans. But they stopped short of giving students the day off to play outside in the snow, a time-honored tradition that has become a relic of the past since the COVID-19 pandemic’s experiment with virtual learning.

The pivot to remote instruction will impact some 500,000 students across more than 1,100 schools. The rest of the city’s school system — including high school students and some sixth through eighth graders at schools serving grades six through 12 — was already scheduled to have classes canceled for a professional development day.

Two high schools in each borough have been repurposed as warming centers through at least Monday, officials said.

For the students who will have online classes to attend and assignments to complete, Mamdani promised a smooth transition.

“Over the past week, my administration has prepared for this moment — ensuring devices are in hand, families are informed and educators are ready to welcome students online,” Mamdani said. “Our school system, and our city, is prepared to weather this storm together.”

Monday’s remote day will be an early major operational test for Mamdani’s new schools chancellor, Kamar Samuels. During a 2024 snowstorm, the schools’ online systems buckled under the stress of hundreds of thousands of students attempting to log online at the same time, as then-Chancellor David Banks blasted the vendor as “not ready for prime time.”

Officials said schools have confirmed that students have the necessary technology to move to remote learning Monday and the school system has worked with vendors to “stress-test” log-in systems and are ready to address technology issues if they arise.

“Preparation matters, especially in moments like this,” Samuels said in a statement. “I am grateful to our school communities for the work they’ve done over the last several days  — from stress-testing technology to securing buildings and getting virtual classrooms ready.”

Much to the disappointment of thousands of children, Mamdani and Samuels confirmed last week that Monday would not be a traditional snow day due to constraints on the school calendar.

New York requires that schools offer 180 instructional days. With the addition of new school holidays in recent years, the city has lost flexibility in the calendar to fully close schools due to inclement weather. Already this year, officials are using teacher professional development days to count toward the legally required total, meaning kids are missing out on key instructional time.

But Samuels seemed optimistic kids can still have some fun on Monday, as schools experiment with a combination of live teaching and class assignments that may be completed on students’ own time throughout the day.

“No one is asking kids to be on a device for six hours and 20 minutes,” the chancellor said during a Friday snowstorm briefing in Downtown Brooklyn. “You can still have your hot chocolate. You can still go out and enjoy the snow.”

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