Majority of NC public school students will start new school year learning from home
The majority of North Carolina public school students will start next school year continuing to learn from home instead of going back to school for face-to-face classes.
At least 46 school districts and 30 charter schools have decided over the past week to use remote instruction when classes resume in August, according to totals compiled by The News & Observer. Those schools represent 788,491 students, accounting for 51.7% of the state’s K-12 public school enrollment.
Fears of returning for in-person instruction during the coronavirus pandemic have been a major theme at school board meetings across the state.
“We can always fix the academics of the kids,” Cumberland County school board member Joseph Sorce said before this week’s vote to start students with six weeks of online classes. “But we can’t fix somebody that passes away from this terrible disease.”
But some board members think it’s a mistake to delay bringing students back to school, even if’s only for a few days a week or an alternating weeks. The state’s 1.5 million students haven’t been in school for face-to-face classes since mid-March.
“At the end of the day, our job as a board is to provide the best education that we can for the kids of Cabarrus County and to make sure that we’re providing them with a quality education, and right now we’re not,” Cabarrus County school board member Laura Blackwell said before the board voted Thursday to start the year with remote instruction.
Teachers lobby for virtual classes
Gov. Roy Cooper announced last week he’s reopening K-12 public schools in August under a “moderate social distancing” plan that limits how many students can be in schools and on buses. This plan, known as Plan B, also mandates daily temperature checks and health screenings, increases school cleanings and says face coverings must be worn by all students and school employees.
Plan B requires schools to limit capacity so that they can maintain 6 feet of social distancing between people in classrooms. It also requires schools to limit buses to one child per seat unless they are family members.
But Cooper also gave school districts the option to use Plan C, which only has remote instruction. He’s not permitting schools to reopen for full-time, in-person instruction, which is Plan A.
The North Carolina Association of Educators began lobbying school districts to delay reopening for in-person classes. Educators have emailed and called board members to say that their lives would be at risk if they had to report back for in-person classes at a time when coronavirus cases are spiking in the state.
“It’s been really important for educators to have a voice in these reopening decisions,” Tamika Walker Kelly, president of NCAE, said in an interview Friday. “We’ve seen districts come out in en masse that there are real concerns about school reopening. We’ve had districts try to address the needs of educators and parents.”
School districts agree to delay in-person classes
Most of the state’s biggest districts, as well as some in smaller, rural communities agreed at emergency school board meetings to go with remote learning. In the Triangle, Wake, Durham, Johnston, Chatham and Orange counties and Chapel Hill-Carrboro are all beginning with remote instruction
Some districts, like Charlotte-Mecklenburg, plan to bring in students for a few days of in-person orientation before going completely online for courses. Other districts, like Wake County, plan to bring in small groups, such as Pre-K and special-education students with severe disabilities, for in-person classes while keeping most children online.
Cooper said these districts are delaying in-person instruction because they believe that it’s in the best interests of their students.
“We want those local school districts to make the best decisions that they can for those children, and we’re here to continue to help to provide guidance to them as they go through this,” Cooper said at a news briefing this week. “This is a difficult time for parents and students. It’s a tough time for teachers and staff as they’re struggling with the best way to do this. There is no easy answer to all of this.”
But Cooper, a Democrat, has come under fire from Republican elected officials for not allowing schools to reopen for full, in-person instruction.
“Gov. Roy Cooper’s orders permit well-off families to send their children to private schools for in-class instruction, while children from less fortunate families receive no in-person education,” Republican Senate leader Phil Berger’s office said in a news release this week.
Reopening delay could hurt low-income students
Berger went on to urge families to apply for state-funded vouchers to help cover the cost of attending private schools. Many private schools plan to reopen for in-person instruction. Thales Academy reopened Monday. It reported its first COVID-19 case from a staff member visiting its Raleigh campus for a training session.
Terry Stoops, vice president of research for the John Locke Foundation, echoed Berger in saying the use of remote instruction will disproportionately hurt single parent families, low income households and rural communities.
“Suburban families will fare fine in this new environment,” Stoops said. “They have the means to forgo salaries or hire tutors or caretakers for their children.
“Children in households who can’t do that will have the most difficulty adapting to this new environment. School districts aren’t thinking of the impact on these vulnerable families.”
School leaders say that the widely criticized remote instruction that schools scrambled to provide in the spring will be significantly better in the fall. Stoops said students, especially those in rural communities, will just fall further behind the longer they’re not getting in-person instruction.
“Full-time remote learning in these communities doom some children to grade level deficiencies that schools will never be able to compensate for,” Stoops said.
But Walker Kelly, the NCAE president, said teachers have been getting more training in how to work with their students in a virtual environment. She said virtual learning will be more robust this fall.
“We acknowledge that there are challenges,” Walker Kelly said. “But we know that when we approach school learning this fall, virtual learning is a safe option for lot of educators and students.”
Unclear when in-person classes will resume
Some school districts and charter schools adopted plans to use remote learning for as little as the first two weeks of school before reevaluating whether to switch to some in-person learning. Some districts agreed to delay in-person classes for nine weeks, pushing it off until October.
Wake County hasn’t set a timetable for when most students will be back in school.
Walker Kelly said it might not be until the winter before some students head back to school for face-to-face classes. She said reopening should depend on the scientific metrics and expertise of health professionals on when it will be safe.
“It could be awhile,” Walker Kelly said. “I’m hesitant to put a time frame on it because this virus has had a deadly effect on our state. The numbers are still rising.
“We know that it is extremely important to balance that with the priority of returning to in-person instruction when it’s safe.”
This story was originally published July 25, 2020 at 9:00 AM with the headline "Majority of NC public school students will start new school year learning from home."
