Like a pandemic version of Alice in Wonderland, the already fluid situation concerning COVID-19 and Mon Schools keeps getting — well — fluider and fluider.
The district late in the afternoon released details regarding a new remote-learning component to its back-to-school re-entry plan, this one involving local teachers after all.
That’s to the relief of many parents who labored over their kids’ homework assignments last spring.
And many continue to feel they aren’t equipped enough to manage the academic rigor required by the state’s Homeschool and West Virginia Virtual options.
There are two caveats, however.
Here’s the first: The district will remain committed to the blended-learning program it announced last week for the first nine weeks of the term, which ends Nov. 2.
That means an alternating schedule of two days physically in the school building and five days at home, as educators, bus drivers and other service employees work out all the particulars of life in the pandemic.
The idea is to limit the risk of exposure through crowded hallways and classrooms, while still allowing for the in-person instruction delivered by a professionally trained teacher.
And, the second: The district will still have to piggyback with the aforementioned West Virginia Virtual portal, which means, based on availability, your child may not always get his or her respective teacher live on the monitor for the two, hour-long sessions a day Mon is hoping for.
A West Virginia Virtual “facilitator” (a certified teacher) transmitting from Charleston may have to step in, if the Mon educator is busy with students that day, said Donna Talerico, the county’s deputy superintendent of schools.
Content and lesson plans will remain the same, she said.
The main motivator, Talerico said, is getting teachers in front of students, if it can be done safely.
Multiple choice
Mon is expecting an enrollment of 11,589 students this year, each bringing a school library’s worth of similarities and differences, Board of Education President Nancy Walker said.
That’s already been reflected in the findings of a survey the district sent out two weeks ago asking parents about kids and classrooms.
A total of 2,403 respondents said they preferred in total distance-learning for their children, opposed to the 2,228, who wanted their kids literally back in school.
Blended-learning (Mon’s model that’s exclusive through Nov. 2) was the option picked by 1,644 households. West Virginia Virtual Learning was favored by 464 households in the survey.
Now, the county is asking parents to choose for the coming year, via the registration form available at the Mon Schools website: https://boe.mono.k12.wv.us.
The four options available the first nine weeks of school are: In-school learning, remote learning, Homeschooling and West Virginia Virtual.
Information on each option is also available at that site, which will be accessible through noon Aug. 25.
“We know that every household in Monongalia County is different,” Board of Education President Nancy Walker said.
“We know that every household in Monongalia County has different concerns and considerations,” she continued. “We have to look at all that. And none of it is easy.”
Pandemic pop-quiz
Just the act of walking into a school building, health-watchers and education proponents across West Virginia say, will be difficult and daunting enough.
Each day will bring a COVID-dance of masks, distancing and the this-is-not-a-drill response of what happens the first time a teacher, staffer or student should fall ill while in school.
Unions representing teachers and other school employees across the county and state have already worried aloud over all of the above.
Gov. Jim Justice and others in his administration and circle, they say, simply could have responded better to the rolling conundrum that is COVID-19.
In recent days, the state, however, has unveiled a metric lifted from the Harvard Global Institute Model that will chart the coronavirus threat each day in West Virginia.
And during the governor’s press briefing Wednesday, State Schools Superintendent Clayton Burch offered numbers of his own that expressed confidence in classrooms for the coming year.
The state Department of Education put out a survey of its own this summer, and of the 60,000 responses netted, Burch said, some
79% said they were in favor of in-school learning this year.
School buildings, he said, have classrooms headed by teachers who care and know how their students actually learn.
Because state families often struggle, economically and emotionally, those same schools also have breakfast and lunch menus to go with sharp-eyed counselors who can spot if there’s trouble at home.
“They’re basically saying, ‘We entrust you to keep us safe,’ ” the superintendent said, of the survey results.
Conduct grade
Which, in turn, COVD-19 czar Dr. Clay Marsh said, means pandemic protocol, and all the observances therein.
Especially so, the physician said, in light of college campuses across the nation that are retreating to remote learning this fall, as students, whole groups of them, are testing positive, just days into the new semester.
The coronavirus, he said, doesn’t blow off its work for a kegger.
“We really have to underscore to our students that the ability to maintain our schools is directly related to our ability to control COVID-19 exchange in our communities,” Marsh said. “This is how we behave and how we respond.”
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