West Haven public schools remain open during the Coronavirus crisis, however most other district events have been cancelled.

The school will be extending homeroom on Friday to hand out emergency academic engagement packets in the event school does close, according to Principal Dana Paredes.

The academic packets are a just in case measure, Mrs Paredes said, adding that English teachers should be giving each student an independent reading book to take home.

The crisis has led to the cancellation of all winter sports events and out-of-state field trips. The school play has been postponed, but hopefully can be rescheduled for May, Mrs. Paredes said.

However, the SATs scheduled for this weekend and for March 25 are still on, she said.

“All extracurricular events have been postponed indefinitely,” Superintendent of Schools Neil Cavallaro said in a letter to staff and parents Wednesday. “We will make every effort possible to make them up, but there is no guarantee.”

Mr. Cavallaro said that a school shut down “will not automatically mean a waiver of the 180-school day requirement.” This means that we could be in school until late June and we could lose our spring recess.

On Wednesday athletes from across the state went to the CIAC headquarters in Cheshire to protest the cancellation of the winter sports tournaments. WHHS junior Conner Fowler estimated there were over 200 students at the protest.

“It was moving, a lot of students and teachers were trying to support the seniors since that would have been their last game,” Fowler said, adding that a lot of people were in tears.

The “coronavirus disease 2019” (abbreviated “COVID-19”) is a respiratory disease first detected in China and has spread internationally to 100 countries, including the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The World Health Organization publicly characterized the disease as a pandemic on Wednesday.

The CDC’s website says “reported illnesses have ranged from very mild (including some with no reported symptoms) to severe, including illness resulting in death.”