Queen Elizabeth II died today, ending a 70-year reign as the United Kingdom’s longest-serving monarch and one of the most recognizable public figures in all of history; she was 96.
An official and highly scripted period of mourning will last 10 days, and the Prince of Wales, her first-born son, has been elevated to the throne as King Charles III.
Schools in the UK, as of this evening, plan to stay open during the mourning period, but the Department for Education (DfE) will soon send official instructions to headteachers at schools throughout the UK.
Although children will be in school for most of the 10-day mourning period, schools are expected to close on the official day of mourning, now expected to be Monday, September 19, as everyone attends or watches the funeral.
Student newspapers in the US were quick to pick up the news. Sophie Lindberg quoted one student in Shawnee Mission, Kansas, who said she had been following the royal family since her childhood, as saying, “It’s one of those moments that I asked everyone in the class to mark what time it is—what you’re doing—because this is one of those moments in history people will be talking about where they were.”
