What are your schools doing?

[hbridge]

What are your schools doing right now? With no national plan, every district, school, state, town, ect. is doing something different. It's insane.

[lizzywednesday]

Currently, we are all virtual EXCEPT for a small cohort of special education students in every school - these are students who have multiple disabilities and do better with in-person instruction & therapies received at school. They began in-person instruction in October.

The plan is to move to an A/B hybrid schedule on 11/30 - students are split alphabetically by last name into two cohorts and rotate days in school on an early dismissal schedule with box lunch options to take home for students who purchase lunch/qualify for free or reduced lunch. All classes will be simulcast so students who are remote will still have live instruction.

The way I understand the split is that students who were in school on that day have independent work to complete at home during the afternoon, while students who were virtual have a short session with the teachers for targeted work on alternating days. This may have changed, but the district hasn't sent anything home yet.

It's too many transitions for DD, so we'll be keeping her fully remote.

ETA: This is a public school district in NJ; we run K-12 with 4 elementaries, a middle school, and a high school. The plans for the elementaries are different from the plans for middle & high school.

All districts have different plans which seem to depend on the overall number of students in them and the local case numbers.

My sister's kids are in a small district in northern NJ which is doing hybrid as 4 in-school early-dismissal days (with reduced class sizes, masking, physical barriers, and afternoon synchronous remote) plus 1 full-day virtual day (into which they cram all their specials - art, PE, music, etc.) for hygiene theater.

[MSWR0319]

I voted for two options - we have full time in person and full time virtual offered by a 3rd party. Not many are doing the virtual option. We went with Connections Academy this year because I had heard how horrible the 3rd party option was. Right now 10% of the school is quarantined and I think 9% of staff. People started pulling their kids out of school towards the end of the week but not sure what they're going to do with them. You're not supposed to be able to start the 3rd party option again until the semester is over in Jan. I'm betting they go virtual within the next week, but the letter they just sent out says they think the Thanksgiving break will help settle things down. WHAT??? It's gonna make things worse. Let's not kid ourselves.

[klwa]

DD2 started back 2 days a week this Monday. DS & DD1 start back this coming Monday, also 2 days a week. Parents were allowed to pick between virtual or 2 days in/2 days virtual, and about 2/3Rds picked to go back, so they've each got about 1/3 of the kids in their class when they're there.

[doberbrat]

I voted 'other' K/1 are hybrid. Low level ELL (non English speakers) and children who are in separate SPED programs more than 75% of the time are also hybrid. Everyone else is remote until they start phasing them back in - the current plan is for 5 grades to start back hybrid one month then the next month the remainder of the grades. But with the state pushing so strongly to get kids back into the classroom, we'll see what happens.

[smilequeen]

Private full time in person. Our elementary hasn’t had a case yet. Our Ms/HS will switch to hybrid or virtual if needed. So far it’s not, but our state sucks so that will likely catch up to them first.

I will add that both have an all virtual option. One kid in my 4th graders class did it for 2 weeks and then came back to school. So no one is doing it full time, but only if they need to stay home. There are not a lot at the MS/HS level doing all virtual. Our particular school though, has seriously had the most impressive response to this starting back in January when they started prepping for the inevitable virtual of last spring. I felt far more comfortable trusting them than some of the other private schools. We were kind of the envy of the private schools around here because we were able to go back in person so successfully.

[KrisM]

We have had in-person for 11 weeks and are remote for the Thanksgiving 2 weeks, just in case people visit. This gives them time to quarantine. I'm voting in-person though because we go back to that on Dec. 1.

We also have a full-time virtual option. We just had a 2 week window to transfer from seated to virtual or reverse.

[jgenie]

Private full time in person since school started in September. Families who aren’t comfortable with in person school are able to choose remote learning.

[SnuggleBuggles]

Our schools are following the county stats. If PCR(?) is greater than 5% then no in person. Plan was to transition back in early November but the teachers union revolted. Now the number has exceeded 5% so it doesn’t matter. The union is going to drag this out. I’ve read their concerns and understand them but I just don’t think 10-15 students is excessive in the space available.


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[gymnbomb]

I voted for in person hybrid model as that seems to be the most common, but really our public K-4 school offered 3 options. 4 day in person/1 day distance learning (no one goes Mondays, our whole district is virtual and they do deep cleaning), 2 days in person/3 days distance learning, and full time distance learning. I believe they gave priority for limited 4 day in person slots to those who fell into various high risk categories.

My son is in first grade. His teacher told me there is 1 full time in person class (I want to say it has 13 kids?), 2 hybrid classes (32 kids per class, 16 go each day), and 1 full distance learning class (currently 29 kids). We opted for full distance learning because I thought the consistency of it outweighed the very high chance COVID cases would skyrocket this winter and his class or whole school would abruptly switch to virtual again. The uncertainty and the sudden change were harder on us last spring than the fact it was virtual.