They just returned to school Monday, but some Wake students will stay home Wednesday
Thousands of Wake County students returned for in-person classes on Monday, but some won’t go to school Wednesday as part of a plan to provide weekly breaks for students and teachers.
Most of Wake County’s 191 schools will hold an “asynchronous learning day” on Wednesday, when students won’t have in-person classes or live online classes. Instead, teachers will give students work they can do on their own on Wednesday.
Wake has revised calendars so that students will have at least one day each week this semester where they won’t meet with their teachers at school or online. School leaders say the weekly asynchronous learning days, scheduled to run into January, are needed to help teachers who are juggling both in-person and online classes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The remote learning/asynchronous days will allow students and families some flexibility to take a break and reduce screen time,” Superintendent Cathy Moore said at an Oct. 20 school board meeting.
“It will also allow teachers to work in their PLTs (professional learning teams) to continue to support student learning across in-person, remote learning rotations or Virtual Academy, as many of our teachers will continue to support students in all of these modalities.”
Teachers want more planning time
Since the school year began in August, some teachers have complained that it’s requiring more work to plan their online lessons than their in-person ones. It’s caused teachers to work on nights and weekends.
Some parents have also complained that their children are spending too much time online for the remote classes.
School administrators say the workload for some teachers will increase now that they’re handling both in-person and online students.
Monday marked the return of thousands of PreK-3 students and some special-education students to in-person instruction. Over the next three weeks, Wake will phase in the return of students in fourth through eighth grades.
Wake modified calendars so that there’s either a holiday, teacher workday or an asynchronous learning day each week for the rest of the fall semester. Some days will apply for all schools and some will only apply to schools on specific calendars.
Wednesday is an optional asynchronous day so around 50 schools will still offer in-person instruction. But these new days will become mandatory starting next week.
On those asynchronous days, teachers can choose to work individually with students online but aren’t required to do so. Teachers also don’t have to hold virtual office hours those days.
“We felt like that it was important to ensure that this opportunity is made available to ... those teachers that are probably going to need it the most,” Drew Cook, assistant superintendent for academics, told the board last week.
Parents complain about asynchronous days
While these new weekly asynchronous days are being praised by teachers, it’s drawn complaints from some parents.
School board member Christine Kushner said some parents have told her they’re concerned about what their children will do on these days.
“I like the asynchronous day as a way of teaching students to have that self agency and they’re being self directed,” Kushner said at a school board committee meeting Monday. “However, some parents are struggling with that.”
Cook said teachers will give students work to do on the asynchronous days. Attendance will be taken, which could be recorded by showing whether an assignment was turned in.
“We have provided guidance and expectation to our schools that by no means should this be a free day,” Cook said. “This is an instructional day.”
Another concern raised by some parents is that the asynchronous days will reduce the limited number of in-person days that students will have, especially in fourth through eighth grades.
Starting in November, fourth through eighth grade students will attend classes on a three-week rotation of one week of in-person classes and two weeks of online classes. The asynchronous days mean some students will have a a maximum of 12 in-person school days this semester. Some will get significantly less if their in-person rotation falls during holiday weeks.
“My son will only get four days of in person school, that’s right,” Nicolas Cellé, a parent at Holly Springs Elementary School, said in an email. “I’m not happy about it and feel like switching between three or four different schedules for him over the next eight weeks is just confusing.”
Cellé said his son need full-time in-person instruction. He said it’s too easy for children to get distracted while taking online classes.
Cook said district leaders recognize the concern and will try to address it, like how they would if a hurricane caused some students to miss more days than others.
“What we would encourage folks to do is to look at it the entire year, where we’re going to work to balance out those in-person days if at all possible over the course of a school year,” Cook said.
This story was originally published October 27, 2020 at 12:05 PM.
