Wake County is returning to online-only classes. When will in-person school resume?
North Carolina’s largest school system is suspending in-person classes after students return from winter break, with the hope of bringing students back on campus before the end of January.
The Wake County school board approved a plan Tuesday that would move all 157,000 students to online classes from Jan. 4-15, with the goal of resuming in-person instruction on Jan. 20. School leaders say the pause will allow them to weather the expected COVID-19 Christmas spike at a time when they’re already dealing with staff shortages due to people being quarantined.
“Sending our young people, especially our most vulnerable, back into a building without educators, or enough educators, or sending them into the building with educators who are trying to pull double or triple duty doesn’t feel right for the students, the teachers or the parents,” said board member Monika Johnson-Hostler.
The board also approved a calendar change for year-round schools that ends their school year earlier, on June 21. The change will allow track 1 families to have a two-week break before the start of next school year.
Wake County is joining school districts around the state, including Johnston and Granville counties and Charlotte-Mecklenburg, that are pausing in-person classes to Jan. 15. But Wake students who have in-person classes will still finish them this week before winter break starts.
High school students would still need to come on campus to take required state exams, but they’ll have until June 30 if they don’t feel comfortable taking them in January. Wake also says that they’ll use state flexibility so that a student’s score on the tests will not cause their grade to drop for that class.
The vote was unanimous, but some board members expressed concerns that it could become an excuse to not have in-person classes next semester.
The plan, for now, is to have all students not in the Virtual Academy receive at least some in-person instruction next semester. This includes bringing back high school students who only have taken online classes since the pandemic hit the state in March.
But school board chairman Keith Sutton tried to downplay those concerns, saying the decision was based strictly on maintaining Wake’s ability to safely and efficiently operate schools.
“This is not a runway or on-ramp to make another decision in two weeks to not return,” Sutton said. “I don’t want to feed a false narrative.”
Mixed reaction to change
The switch to online classes drew praise from Wake NCAE and a number of teachers. The vote about in-person instruction drew most of the responses in 44 pages of public comments submitted for the board meeting.
“Allowing a two-week ‘pause’ would allow time to reconsider what viral spread in the community looks like mid-January,” wrote Aimee Pattison, a Wake teacher and parent. “It would give time for schools to reassess how to group students differently to adhere to the 3 W’s at all times. It would allow time for the community to take this seriously.”
But a number of people said it’s a mistake to halt in-person classes.
“Our children are falling behind academically, as the mental health toll increases,” Amber Whiteley, a nurse and the parent of a fourth-grade student, wrote to the board. “More anxiety, more depression, more suicide. Virtual learning does not work for many.”
Dana Cooke, a Wake fifth-grade teacher, said 30% of the school’s fifth-grade students aren’t showing up regularly online or doing virtual assignments. Cooke said in-person classes would help keep students accountable.
“Yes, there is a health risk looming over us, but we owe it to our kids to continue to be vigilant in social distancing and sanitizing within the schools, to guarantee their success for the future,” Cooke wrote the board. “You have given parents the choice to switch to Virtual Academy.
“Give the other students that want and/or need to be in school the chance to thrive in person with their educators.”
COVID cases rising
The return to remote instruction comes at a time when both Wake County and North Carolina have seen a post-Thanksgiving spike in new COVID-19 cases.
Tuesday was the 10th time this month that North Carolina has reported more than 5,000 new COVID cases in a single day, the News & Observer reported.
The rise in the number of cases caused Wake County’s status to move from yellow to orange in the state’s COVID-19 alert system last week, meaning there’s “substantial community spread.”
Some people urged the district to suspend in-person classes until the COVID numbers improve.
“Please make the choice to keep our students and teachers safe,” Miriam Caldwell wrote to the board. “Students are still learning. This is not a lost year. But even one life lost is too many.”
The COVID spike has caused some families to want to keep their children in online classes, even though they didn’t sign up for the Virtual Academy program, according to Drew Cook, Wake’s assistant superintendent for academics. He says they’re trying to accommodate those families but it’s leading to online class sizes that are larger than desired.
Due to the rise in cases, the school district plans to use $650,000 in federal coronavirus relief funds to hire up to 13 people to help county health officials with their contact tracing efforts.
On Thursday, the district reported a record 80 new confirmed COVID-19 cases over the past week among students and staff. Superintendent Cathy Moore said coronavirus transmission isn’t happening in schools, but community spread is causing a growing number of school employees to be quarantined.
While there are 3,000 substitutes on the district’s books, Moore said only 250 to 300 regularly pick up work at a time when the district needs 400 to 500 a day due to teacher absences.
“My building is already strained by staff absences due to quarantines,” Lauren Nadolski, a Wake teacher, wrote to the board. “It is impossible to constantly maintain 6 feet of distance when helping students.
“Due to high community spread, this makes work riskier. Numbers are only going to increase, and we should just be honest and forward-thinking about that.”
Jan. 20 return eyed for in-person
The goal is to resume in-person instruction for most schools on Jan. 20, when the spring semester starts. Early colleges, the leadership academies and Knightdale High School will start the spring semester on Jan. 4 with virtual classes before resuming in-person instruction Jan. 20.
Year-round students would return from their break for in-person classes on Jan. 25.
District officials say 77,284 students are enrolled in the Virtual Academy in the spring semester, down from the 85,550 students in the fall semester.
For the spring semester, fourth and fifth grades would join PreK-3 students and K-12 students in special education regional programs who have been receiving daily face-to-face classes this semester.
Middle school and high school students would be on a rotation of one week of in-person classes and two weeks of online classes.
Concerns about high school students
Board members asked about switching middle schools and high schools to a two-week rotation that would increase the amount of in-person time students would get. This is especially a concern since their failure rates are up this semester.
School officials pointed Tuesday to how 84% of secondary school principals said changing to a 2-week rotation would not be feasible. Cook said the change at this late date would create scheduling issues as well as requiring hiring additional staff to supervise students.
Middle schools and high schools are subject to state rules that limit how many students can be on campus during the pandemic. Only elementary schools are allowed to operate on full capacity.
Cook said they’re looking at ways to bring students on campus more than just the one week they’re scheduled to have in-person classes out of three weeks. But board members pressed administrators to do more to help students.
“We have asked a lot of the high schoolers because they are older and we can ‘expect,’ quote unquote, more from them to be independent, but many of them are not able to do so,” said new board member Karen Carter. “I just want to express my concern over how many high schoolers we are losing.”
This story was originally published December 15, 2020 at 7:49 PM.
