Rethinking the school year? What to know about CMS virtual academy.
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Charlotte 2021 Back to School
Due to COVID-19, masks are required at CMS and adults are encouraged to get vaccinated. There’s also a push among educators ad parents to catch up students who lost academic progress during the pandemic.
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A rise in COVID-19 cases just as local schools re-open classrooms has some parents scrambling to get their children into the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ virtual learning options.
As of Tuesday, the window for registration into the elementary (grades 3-5), middle or high school virtual schools is open, the CMS communications team told the Observer. The district has information and enrollment forms online at cmschoice.org.
“The enrollment application will remain open for transfers into the virtual school but at the moment those applicants will be placed on a waiting list,” Brian Hacker, a CMS media relations specialist, said Tuesday.
CMS’ first day is Aug. 25.
Both the elementary and middle school virtual options are new for the 2021-22 school year. CMS, prior to the pandemic, offered high school students the option of an entirely virtual learning experience.
”The pandemic has brought attention to virtual learning at a much more rapid pace than might have happened otherwise,” said Kim King, the new principal of Charlotte Mecklenburg Virtual Elementary, “and health concerns are a very real driver for some families to seek virtual learning right now.”
King said the latest numbers show 574 students have applied to the elementary virtual program.
Demand for these online-only learning options, resulting in a wait list at CMS, comes as much of the United States finds itself again gripped by rising COVID-19 cases, largely among unvaccinated people, which includes most school-age children. Data for cases locally show CMS’ return to classrooms next week will take place during the worst spread of the virus seen in months.
COVID and Charlotte schools
The CMS board recently voted to require masks for all students and staff during the upcoming school year, regardless of vaccination status, which is in line with state and federal COVID-19 prevention advice. So far, the district is not mandating vaccines among teachers, staff or students.
On one hand, next week’s start of school with full in-person instruction offers much more uniformity than when families and school staff were juggling staggered classroom schedules and hybrid remote learning throughout the 2020-21 school year.
On the other hand, the district has less flexibility, under North Carolina law, to switch classrooms from in-person to remote learning, or to use rotating schedules to have fewer students in buildings at one time. And parents worried about sending children back into social and classroom settings face a higher risk of a more-contagious strain of the virus spreading.
CMS, in the early months of 2021, maintained reduced classroom size and social distancing for older students when the spread of COVID-19 was measurably better than what it is today.
In February and March, for example, middle and high school students were spending large amounts of instruction time in remote learning. Then, data from the Mecklenburg health department showed substantially lower positivity rates locally compared to the recent 13%.
At key points earlier this year when district leaders elected to implement further re-opening of classrooms, the case rate observed in Mecklenburg County was much lower than today’s. Back then, families had the option of participating in the re-opening of in-person classrooms or choosing to stay in a remote-based program. At the time, an increasing amount of adults were getting vaccinated and cases slowed considerably. Then, CMS saw an increase of families wanting to return in-person.
In mid-March, when students were returning in the largest numbers CMS had permitted all year, the average positivity rate was less than 5% in Mecklenburg.
The average number of confirmed COVID infections over a 7-day period, in March, was 112 for every 100,000 people in Mecklenburg. At present, the rate is now close to 300 infections among every 100,000 people.
This story was originally published August 17, 2021 at 12:07 PM.
