Hurricane Sandy Shutters Thousands of Schools

One World Trade Center and large portions of lower Manhattan and Hoboken, N.J., are seen without power from Jersey City, N.J., on Tuesday, the morning after a powerful storm that started out as Hurricane Sandy made landfall on the East Coast. New York City awakened Tuesday to a flooded subway system, shuttered financial markets and hundreds of thousands of people without power.

—Charles Sykes/AP

By Lesli A. Maxwell

As Hurricane Sandy began unleashing its fury on the East Coast Monday, the storm shuttered thousands of schools across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern states, with millions of students to be out of school for at least two days, state education officials said.

In New York City, a spokeswoman said the 1 million-student system would remain shut down at least through Wednesday, due to expected severe weather conditions caused by the hurricane. Schools in Boston, the District of Columbia, Philadelphia, and Providence, R.I., were shut down Monday.

With widespread power outages and damage expected across much of the East Coast between North Carolina and Maine, some officials said that disruptions to schools could stretch through much of the week and...