With NYC slowly reopening, families are stepping out to explore favorite playgrounds, and now Brooklyn Bridge Park offers a brand new place to play. Three acres of parkland debuted last week with the opening of the Pier 2 Uplands.

The Uplands include a brand new sprayground, adding to Brooklyn Bridge Park's already spectacular playground scene and are a worthy addition to our summer staycation bucket list.

"While the new school year will begin in August, it will not start with students at school facilities," announced Superintendent Austin Buetner today, allowing the families of 735,00 students to stop speculating. "There is a public health imperative to keep schools from becoming a petrie dish."

Citing the recommendations of the WHO and health experts from around the globe, the rising rates of COVID cases in the Los Angeles area, and funding challenges that have yet to be addressed, Buetner said that to avoid compromising the health and safety of the school community and all those connected to it, on-campus learning will simply not be possible in August. San Diego Unified School District made a similar announcement today; whether other regional school districts follow suit remains to be seen.

Buetner's broad strokes for how LAUSD plans to make off-campus learning successful, and for how students could return to LAUSD campuses in the near future, follow.

We all know that summer camp 2020 looks a little different, but the fun doesn't have to be canceled. If you're hosting "summer camp" for the kids at home or in your backyard this year—also sometimes known as mom-camp or dad-camp—we've got some hacks for you so everyone enjoys it and parents don't drive themselves mad.

Although it may look like all fun and games, the best summer camps allow time and the space for children to explore personal interests and build confidence while providing a loose routine. With a few simple guidelines, you can hack your way to a fun summer camp schedule with camp games, arts and crafts, and even a cool name for your brand-new camp.

And if you're still searching for a week or two of in-person or virtual summer camps in 2020, check out our chock-full Camp Guides.

I am an optimist by nature, but this pandemic has thrown me off my glass-half-full, always-look-on-the-bright-side stride in short order. On Wednesday, March 11, I was a NYC mom about town, enjoying a rare trip to Broadway with my oldest kids courtesy of tickets gifted by a friend. By the time the curtain closed and I exited the theater with two kids in tow, I was hit from all angles with breaking news alerts as I flicked on my phone. An NBA player had tested positive for the coronavirus; the season was off. Tom Hanks and his wife were positive, too.

By noon the next day, I learned my son's high school was shutting down indefinitely. By the time I went to pick up my two daughters from their school that afternoon, my husband and I had already had the "are we stupid/irresponsible/bad parents to keep sending them to school" conversation, and I was spiraling out of control with worry.

The hits kept coming. One by one, the things we relied on to enrich our all-too-cramped New York City way of life were taken away. No school. No museums. No libraries, No playgrounds. No ballfields. No safe escape from our Harlem apartment, where the virus had stricken neighbors one-by-one and our zip code quickly ranked among the hardest hit in the city, which was the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak. We don't have a car, relying on public transit to get around. It suddenly felt like a surefire way to invite the virus into our home.

Yes, Los Angeles, there is summer camp. Not only that, there's free summer camp, cheap summer camp, and summer camp scholarships. And these are all live, in-person camps set up to help working families at 50 different parks around LA County.

Space is available now for these free and reduced cost programs that include mini-camps and full-day camps for kids ages six and up. The Board of Supervisors is offering both 50% and 100% scholarships for the LA County Parks 2020 Summer Camps programs—available on a first-come, first-served basis—to provide support for families that are slowly integrating back into the workforce. 

Cooped up New Yorkers were given some good news this week: You can add a visit to Governors Island to your list of safe, outdoor summer staycation activities. The 172-acre island in the heart of New York Harbor reopens to the public Wednesday, July 15. Like many mainstays, there are new rules for summer 2020, including social distancing, mandatory mask wearing, and the most significant change: Reservations are required for ferry rides.

If you're looking to escape the confines of your home, Governors Island has long been one of our favorite summer playgrounds, with its vast green spaces, fresh air, and views of the Manhattan skyline. Read on for details about the summer 2020 Governors Island season and programming, plus learn how to score your ferry reservation. We've got more family-friendly picks for fun in our Summer Guide for NYC Kids.

As the debate over school reopenings rages on, New York City's Board of Health voted Tuesday to allow city daycares to reopen on Monday, July 13. Daycares must meet a series of heightened health and safety protocols to reopen. The announcement affects approximately 3,000 child care providers across the five boroughs and is welcome news for working parents who may have been called back to the office with the city squarely in Phase 3 of reopening.

City-supervised daycares have been shuttered since April 6; those supervised by the state were never ordered closed.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza announced the framework for getting the nation's largest school system back to school in September 2020. The key takeaway for city parents: Though students will be learning five days a week during the 2020-21 school year, it's unlikely they will attend in-person classes more than 2-3 days a week as the city adopts a "blended learning" plan for the upcoming school year.

"Students will return in September to either a blended model or a fully remote model if they so choose," de Blasio announced. "Blended learning means students will be taught on-site in school for part of the week and remotely for other portions of the week. Over the past several months, we've worked with many stakeholders, including our principals, to develop scheduling models that can accommodate limited in-person attendance."

New York City's public schools, which make up the largest school district in the nation, have been shuttered since March 16, and the city's 1.1 million students finished the school year remotely.