After months of full remote learning, East Aurora School District 131 is moving forward with a plan to return some students to the classroom in March.
The district recently released a reopening plan that offers a hybrid schedule for families that includes in-person learning two days a week and remote learning the rest of the time.
Families who have chosen full remote learning can continue with full e-learning under the plan.
The hybrid e-learning model the district will use gives educators a way to teach remote and in-person students at the same time, district officials said.
The hybrid model including in-person learning is set to begin March 1 for pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. For high school students, the move will be done by grade level at the start of the fourth quarter beginning April 12.
The move to the hybrid schedule is contingent on conditions with the pandemic, according to district officials.
District 131 has been doing full remote learning since the beginning of the school year due to the high COVID-19 positivity rate on Aurora’s East Side, district officials said.
The plan to move to in-person learning is based on a drop in the positivity rate on the East Side and in response to district surveys at the elementary level, according to officials.
“The positivity rate has declined drastically from where they were in November,” East Aurora School District Superintendent Jennifer Norrell said.
In November the East Side of Aurora had positivity rates on any given week that were at 23% to 27%, but those figures have dropped to approximately 7% to 13%, she said.
“It is definitely a shift,” Norrell said.
The district will continue to monitor the COVID-19 positivity rate in the East Aurora area while planning to welcome students back in-person beginning next month, she said.
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“We remind our families that if the trend of a decreasing positivity rate changes, it may cause another delay but we certainly are doing everything in our power to make sure we are prepared to open schools,” Norrell said.
“We are going to watch what happens as we go through a Super Bowl weekend and a Valentine’s Day weekend,” she said. “We hope people do the right thing and practice social distancing, wear masks and don’t engage in high-risk large group activities so we can remain at a relatively low positivity rate and bring our children back to the classroom without the risk of health and safety.”
Some people are excited about a return of in-person learning, but there is no pressure for families who want to continue with full remote learning, she said.
“If parents don’t feel safe about sending their children to in-person learning they do not have to compromise. They can continue doing exactly what they have been doing since August,” Norrell said.
“For our staff, they do have to come back in larger numbers on-site but they will only be coming in a couple of days a week to deliver in-person and e-learning. It will allow us to continue our routine sanitation of the buildings,” Norrell said.
Under the plan, pre-kindergarten through fifth grade will have in-person learning on Mondays and Wednesdays; sixth- through eighth-grade students at Simmons Middle School, Cowherd Middle School and Fred Rodgers Magnet Academy will have in-person learning Mondays and Tuesdays, while sixth- through eighth-graders at Waldo Middle School will have in-person learning Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Spring break will be held March 29 to April 5 according to the district calendar. The school year will end June 4.
The hybrid plan begins for high school students by grade level April 12. A schedule on that transition is forthcoming, district officials said.
Norrell noted that sometimes the need for in-person school days goes beyond academics.
“We know there are needs tied to social-emotional opportunities to receive assistance or talk to someone,” she said. “That is something we found that is most difficult to measure. Although we have daily social-emotional learning lessons built in at the top of the morning every single day, we still don’t have a really good way to gauge the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and being in remote learning has had on children. I don’t know that anyone does but at least if our kids are afforded the opportunity to come to school if they need to, we have the opportunity to meet those needs.”
Linda Girardi is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.