Springs School District officials on Monday announced that the school will soon start offering in-person instruction to larger groups of students four days per week instead of two, and in the interim will begin live-streaming classroom lessons.
The changes appear to line up with what many Springs parents had been asking for over the past several weeks. However, Debra Winter, the district superintendent, said administrators were acting on ideas they had been discussing since August, rather than specifically responding to parent feedback.
Since Sept. 8, Springs students have been attending school in-person two days per week and doing lessons remotely the other three days. Ms. Winter said she has come to believe that "two days in person is not enough." She acknowledged that she was not a fan of the live-streaming option at the beginning but has come around to it after seeing what other local schools are doing.
"We have been asked to do amazing things in a short period of time," Ms. Winter said in an interview Tuesday. "Where I get kind of defensive is, we opened safely. We did. I'm getting blasted, 'You were too precautionary.' I don't think so. The C.D.C. guidelines and Department of Health allowed all districts to open in a hybrid format. We said we'd see how it goes, see what our Covid rates are. We didn't know whether we would see that spike. But that spike is not coming from the schools. All of the spikes have been traced back to parties, to gatherings. Not because a school district did something irresponsible."
To date, the Springs School has had just one case of Covid-19 among its student body.
Wednesdays will still be remote-learning days. During Monday's school board meeting, Ms. Winter explained that the first group of students who will return four days per week is a group of 22 special education students who have critical academic needs. The goal is to start Nov. 16. The district will have to hire a part-time special education teacher in the next couple of weeks to make it happen.
"Those special education teachers have clearly said this [hybrid plan] isn't working for these kids. They said, 'I need them to be in front of me four days a week,' " Ms. Winter said.
After those kids return, the next group to come back will be students in kindergarten through second grade. That will mean an additional 70 students on campus, though some of the kindergarten and first-grade classes are in the Springs Youth Association building and modular classrooms. Ms. Winter said she hopes that will happen around or after Thanksgiving, but it hinges on receiving plexiglass desk dividers and more supplies and hiring a few additional teachers and teacher aides.
Grades three through five will follow, though there is no set date yet, Ms. Winter said. After that will come the middle school students, which will likely require hiring a part-time science teacher.
"We haven't gotten there yet. There's a lot to look at. We don't have pure sixth, seventh, and eighth-grade teachers," the superintendent said. "If I had a team of teachers who just taught sixth, this would be a no-brainer. But I have seventh and eighth-grade teachers who also teach sixth grade."
In the interim, that's where live-streaming will come in. Parents will have to agree to rules such as no screenshots or video recording of teachers or other students.
"We are going to push that envelope," Ms. Winter said. "I've spoken to my colleagues. They've all been through the growing pains with this. Some started out live-streaming. Some were more cautious and took their time. I really feel like [teachers] are working too hard. They should work smarter, not harder. I think live-streaming will help them in that area."
Tatiana Tucci, a Springs parent of four who had been lobbying for changes to the hybrid plan, said Tuesday she was "elated" over the district's decision. "I think it was about time," she said. "It is also an effective way to teach. They are overwhelmed because instead of live-streaming they are doing packages [of work] and more work than needed, plus our children are falling behind with this in-and-out education."
But not everyone is on board with live-streaming. In particular, many Springs teachers are concerned it will be detrimental.
"There would be no time in the day for your children to meet in a Google meet with their individual teachers," Katie Farmer, a Springs School teacher, said in a letter to the school board this week. "In the current hybrid model, children have the complete attention of the teacher when they are in the classroom."
In live-streaming, Ms. Farmer said, the teachers' attention would be divided between the students in class and the students at home. "To put it in perspective for you, think about the [school board] meeting two weeks ago -- how many people were frustrated at home because they couldn't hear people at the meeting. That would be the students not hearing the questions of other students in the classroom."
Ms. Winter said administrators had scrapped a plan to add alternating Wednesdays for the two separate groups of students.
"We have been talking about this since day one. This was phase one," she said. "Phase two was supposed to be Wednesdays, but that is a scheduling nightmare. I do believe the four days is something that is very doable without much change to the schedule, and the kids who aren't coming back right away will get an improved experience remotely."