The Pennsylvania Department of Education isn’t convinced schools will be safe enough for students to return in the fall, and officials are already preparing for the possibility.

“We’re going to track the data and we’re going to hope for the best, but unless we can really work towards solving this pandemic and lessening the number of cases, there’s a chance that students may not return to school,” Education Secretary Pedro Rivera told WHTM.

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“At the end of the day, we’re going to make sure that the health and welfare of our students is first and foremost, front and center,” he said. “And we’re not going to allow and ask students to return to school in an unsafe environment.”

Rivera praised Pennsylvania schools for continuing classes with online and print materials and programming on public television during the coronavirus pandemic, and said the Department of Education is working with districts to improve access to technology and the internet, particularly in rural and urban schools.

“One of the things we’ve been able to do in a community like that is make our online portal content downloadable and some of our equity grants have actually gone to printing and shipping and delivery costs,” he said.

Rivera told WHTM current data on the coronavirus doesn’t look good for reopening schools in the fall, but officials are taking a wait and see approach.

“We’re preparing for the best, but we’re planning for the worst,” he said.

The comments come as President Trump recently predicted “you’ll see a lot of schools open up” in the near future, potentially for the current school year. On Tuesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom also suggested kids there could possibly head back to class as soon as July, and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has also left open the possibility of re-opening schools this spring, The New York Times reports.

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But more than 40 states have already canceled classes for the remainder of the current school year, and many are planning re-openings based on benchmarks for testing and tracing the coronavirus.

“We closed school facilities on March 13 so our schools did not become a petri dish and cause the virus to spread in the communities we serve,” Austin Beutner, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, told the Times. “That’s worked. We do not want to reverse that in a hasty return to schools.”

In Illinois, school officials are warning that remote learning could continue indefinitely.

“This may be the new normal, even in the fall,” Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson said.

If and when schools officially reopen with in-person classes will likely vary widely based on the prevalence of the coronavirus, officials said, and they expect it will have a significant impact on the public’s perception of the fight against the virus whenever it happens.

“I think it’s going to be a cornerstone,” Matt Jones, chief of staff for the Georgia Department of Education, told the Times. “There are certain elements of our society that are part of the fabric of who we are, and public education, and schooling, is just one of those things.”