As the school buses begin to roll again at the Littlestown Area School District (LASD) this week, other students across the county will have to wait to discover what the fall semester has in store for them.
All six county school districts as well as the VIDA Charter School are set to reopen with at least partial in-person teaching within the next few weeks.
Reopening Plans
The six school districts and other schools in the county have each prepared their own Health and Safety plans and each have offered different plans for teaching and starting dates.
The opening dates are staggered over the next two weeks, beginning with yesterday’s opening in the LASD and ending with Fairfield Area School District (FASD) which will open on September 8.
Each school district has enumerated they many ways they will keep their school safe. The plans include rules about hygiene, social distancing, and face coverings.
Because classrooms are small and more contact means more chances for infection, most schools will be operating at least in part under a hybrid approach in which children study in school some days and at home others.
But each school has made a different decision about how many in-school days are safe.
At LASD, the Gettysburg Area School District (GASD), and the VIDA Charter school, elementary children will attend school every day. At Conewago Valley School District (CVSD) children in K-3 will attend every day.
In most districts, middle and high school students will have an A/B type schedule where half of the students attend school every day.
At FASD all children, including elementary students, will be on an alternating-day schedule and at LASD middle school students will attend school every day.
Most school districts will operate on a four-day teaching schedule, allowing teachers the fifth day to prepare for online learning.
Many schools have modified their schedules when possible to allow students to stay with a cohort in a single classroom while teachers move between the classrooms.
Students will eat in the cafeterias but with appropriate spacing.
Most schools have developed individual plans for students who receive special education services or are developing English language skills.
CVSD superintendent Christopher Rudisill said the decision to send elementary students to school every day was an important one. “It’s where they learn to read and where they ‘learn school,’” he said.
“Our priorities are safety and health for students and staff, and that we can provide the necessary education for our students,” said Rudisill.
Decision-making
Decisions about the re-openings have been made with help of parent surveys, faculty and staff committees, and consultations with school boards. “We have a 20-person administrative team,” said GASD superintendent Jason Perrin. “We solicited a lot of feedback.”
Rudisill said the district had been working on the reopening plan since June with input from facility cleaning, communications, outreach, construction, extracurricular, special ed, transportation, and resources committees.
“We’ve been using the CDC and state guidelines to formulate our plan,” said Rudisill.
Rudisill said it was difficult to create enough distance between children in the middle and high schools, but that there was more room for kids to spread out at the elementary level.
GASD does not have that luxury, and is pressing the limits of hygiene by allowing only three feet of separation between elementary school children who will be wearing face masks all day.
At VIDA, there is more room. “We’ve removed a lot of furniture. Every teacher’s desk has been placed in storage,” said school Executive Director Christine Miller.
Online Learning
Most schools are allowing students to choose a 100 percent online learning option in which they do not come to school at all. Some districts are using online courses taught by district teachers and some are using third-party vendors. GASD is offering students the choice of online courses taught by GASD teachers or by a third party.
No online option is available at CVSD. “We don’t have an online academy. We want to create our own for 2021-2022. We want it to follow what they would get if they came to Conewago Valley,” said Rudisill.
At VIDA the online option is “completely facilitated and designed by the classroom teachers,” said Miller. “We’ll be having video feeds of the live classrooms. Students can log on and see what’s happening in real time.”
Resolving Different Opinions
Creating the reopening plans was sometimes stressful.
“We have staff that have been very vocal. The teachers have various feelings and emotions about returning to school. That’s the most challenging part,” said Miller. “All school leaders are grappling with how to keep the school safe and clean and how to keep a safe distance.”
“I feel confident in our plans. We’re looking forward to getting back to some normalcy in our community,” said Miller.
“At the end of the day you do what’s best for kids. Everybody had their chance to talk and we heard them” said Perrin. “Not everyone is always going to be happy, but most are satisfied.”
“It wasn’t ideally what we wanted to be doing all summer long,” said Miller.
Charles (Chuck) Stangor is Gettysburg Connection's Owner, Publisher, and Editor in Chief. I would like to hear from you. Please contact me at cstangor@gettysburgconnection.org.