We just heard what the likely plan is going to be from our town, and it brings up something a PP mentioned about it being public school and being able to re-enter in person teaching at any point in the school year.
The plan being presented is this:
- Hybrid learning (classes divided into two cohorts, A and B). Cohort A goes to in person teaching M-T, Cohort B goes on Th-F, and all students learn virtually from their classroom teachers on the Wednesdays and the days they are not in person. For this, the classes are being taught by the public school teacher, so the teachers will need to be able to manage live and virtual classes at the same time.
- Full remote will be made available for families who do not wish to return to in person learning. BUT the remote option would be a third party curriculum and not the students participating in the teacher-led virtual classes through the public school. I researched the program being proposed, and it is a self-paced learning platform with pre-recorded "classroom" instruction by a teacher, and no actual interaction with a class or teacher in any live online setting.
Because hybrid and full remote students will be learning two different curricula....You cannot opt into one or the other once you commit to it. So either students are hybrid in person and stay in the local system, or they commit to a full year of this learning program (because the school has to use funds allocated to the student to purchase it, they are not allowing students to switch between the two and only purchasing the licenses for those that opt for full remote).
So this means either you commit to sending your kids back to the building, come what may, or you commit to them basically isolating from their teachers and classmates for the year, and having no live instruction at all (barely an improvement over what we had in the spring). Sending my kids to an established virtual school for the year just seems more and more likely, at least they won't lose out on the interaction and classroom style connection with other people.