Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools pivot again. Part-time, in-person classes start Monday.
Chapel Hill-Carrboro students will begin a hybrid Plan B schedule of both in-person and virtual classes Monday, with elementary students shifting to four days a week of Plan A in-person classes after spring break.
The new schedule, which the board approved unanimously Thursday, will continue to set aside Wednesdays for remote learning, giving staff time to clean the schools and teachers time to plan and work more closely with small groups and at-risk students.
“We fully appreciate — every one of the board members here — that it is challenging for families who are sending kids back to have Wednesdays (remote),” board member Mary Ann Wolf said. However, the services the district will be able to provide are “so important” for remote learners, as well as those attending in person who may need additional support, she and others said.
The board’s meeting was delayed by an hour Thursday by the weather. Internet connections were spotty, as board members glanced nervously out their windows, discussing what to do..
“I’m on the second floor, and kind of watching the trees move in alarming ways,” board member Rani Dasi said.
They voted to push the meeting to 7:30, and it continued late into the night.
In-person, hybrid student schedules
Parents will be able to choose next week whether to send their students to school in person for two days, based on their assigned cohort, or keep them in remote classes all week. Spring break is March 29 to April 2.
On April 5, elementary students, students with specialized education plans, and children of district staff in grades preK-8 will return to four days of in-person learning. Families who don’t want their students to return to school can keep them in virtual-only classes.
Middle and high school students will return to a Plan B hybrid on Monday, attending two days a week of in-person classes and maintaining 6 feet of physical distancing. That schedule will continue after spring break, except for students with a disability plan, who will have in-person learning at least four days a week.
Teachers, unless they have a disability waiver, will teach in person. Students who attend class in-person but have a remote teacher will be supervised by a certified staff member, district officials said.
The board also temporarily revised the district’s leave policy to require teachers who get COVID-19 to get a note saying they are no longer contagious from a doctor or the Orange County Health Department before returning to work.
Superintendent Nyah Hamlett urged the community to “extend each other the grace that we expect to see others extend to us,” because the district is adapting to guidance and requirements that continue to change.
“We are really committed to moving with a sense of urgency to get this right on behalf of our students,” Hamlett said. “(I) just wanted to share that as a district, we are holding ourselves accountable to ensure that we’re remaining student-centered and not allowing adult issues to get in the way of really and truly what students need.”
Teachers and parents who spoke before the vote were split over whether students should come back to four or five days of in-person learning. Teachers cited the value of having time to focus their efforts, while parents worried about children who have been suffering academically, socially and emotionally in remote learning for over a year.
His 7-year-old son used to want to learn and talk about school, Brandon Corbin said, but the Scroggs Elementary first-grader is now “a child that cries several nights a week.”
When he learned that he would be going back to school, “there was excitement in his soul,” Corbin said.
“It was more than just excitement in his voice. There was an eagerness in his eyes, and there’s that pep in his step that had been missing over this school year,” he said.
In surveys this week, Hamlett said, at least two-thirds of families with elementary students said they wanted a return to in-person classes. About half of middle school families and 41% of high school families are interested in in-person classes, she said.
Durham, Wake, Orange County return
Chapel Hill-Carrboro and the Durham Public Schools were among the last school districts in North Carolina to reopen for in-person instruction.
The Chapel Hill-Carrboro district brought back roughly 50 to 60 Adapted Curriculum students to in-person classes four days a week in December. The school board delayed a decision to bring back other students until this year, voting in February to reopen on a Plan B schedule March 22.
Durham elementary students returned to in-person learning March 15 but immediately closed four classrooms at two schools after students and a staff member tested positive for COVID-19.
Elementary students are attending in-person classes four days a week, and the district’s specialty high schools also returned to in-person classes Thursday. Middle school students and the remaining high schools will start in-person classes April 8.
Students in the Orange County Schools returned to part-time, in-person learning March 8. The district previously brought its preK and exceptional children’s program students back in late October and grades K-2 in late January.
Orange County Superintendent Monique Felder is expected to present a Plan A schedule to the board at its March 22 meeting.
Wake County began bringing back its students in grades preK-3 to daily in-person instruction in October. Fourth- and fifth-graders followed on Monday.
Wake Superintendent Cathy Moore recommended this week that middle and high school students could return to Plan A in-person learning in April, beginning with modified-calendar schools and early colleges on April 5.
Traditional-calendar students would return to Plan A learning April 8, and year-round middle school students would return April 14, she said.
This story was originally published March 19, 2021 at 7:48 AM.
