New York’s governor and its Board of Regents seem to be on different wavelengths when it comes to online teaching when the state’s school districts reopen this fall.

On Tuesday, Cuomo said the state is partnering with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a blueprint to reimagine education. Questions the governor wants to answer with the help of the Gates Foundation include how technology can be used to provide more opportunities to students, how technology can be used to meet educational needs of students with disabilities, how educators can be given more tools to use technology and how technology can create larger class or lecture hall environments in an age of socially distancing rules.

In advance of its meeting on Monday, the state Board of Regents announced the creation of a statewide task force that will help devise a plan to reopen schools in the fall. During the board’s meeting Monday, Regent Roger Tilles of Brookville expressed his concerns with the digital divide in school districts that have been using online teaching since the mid-March shutdown of schools. Tilles asked how the Board of Regents is going to deal with issues of hardware for students, accessibility for students for online learning and the parameters teachers should meet for online learning.

“Are we doing that?” Tilles asked. “Is this group doing that? Or are we going to cede our responsibility to the governor?”

Shannon Tahoe, interim state education commissioner, replied to Tilles by saying the digital divide is one of her chief concerns from the COVID-19 shutdown of schools along with the social and emotional needs of children.

State officials are working on surveys to give to school districts to gauge what issues districts are having with the shift to online learning. Locally, there have been some issues with lack of internet availability, access to devices for all students, teachers who aren’t yet comfortable teaching online and students who aren’t engaging with online learning.

Tahoe said the issues Tilles raised should be part of Board of Regents’ reopening task force discussions, but said it is important right now to figure out the practical limitations of online-based learning throughout the state.

“I do think it will come up in our conversations on reopening and our reopening task force and what that looks like and what is appropriate during next fall,” Tahoe said. “Will it be blended learning? How will this work? First we need to get access to our children for those who don’t have access to get digital technology right now, which is why we’re doing everything permissible in our state and federal funding streams to get them access.”

Tilles reiterated his position that the Board of Regents needs to devise guidelines soon so that school districts can be ready for the fall reopening of school. Tahoe was about to respond to Tilles when the conversation was cut short by Betty Rosas, Regents chancellor.

“I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves with all due respect to everybody,” Rosas said. “If you recall we just announced the statewide task force. … What we don’t want to do right now is get into a conversation of something we haven’t quite — we just announced it on Wednesday.”