The East Hampton School District has updated its Covid-19 reopening plans to include a Monday, Aug. 31, cut-off date for John M. Marshall Elementary School families to register for in-person learning come September. Those who do not register by Monday will be placed in the fully remote learning plan and will be added to a waiting list for in-person classes as seats become available or as Covid-19 regulations shift.
Those who choose the remote plan will have to commit to it for 10 weeks for middle and high school students and for 13 weeks for elementary school students, based on their respective schools' quarter-year or trimester academic setups. That is a change from the five-week commitment the district initially required.
Richard Burns, the East Hampton School District superintendent, said Monday that the district "is getting really close" to reaching capacity at the elementary school based on social distancing requirements in classrooms. Space is not an issue at the middle and high schools, he said. John Marshall families can choose between the fully remote and fully in-person programs. Families of middle and high school students can choose between school in person two days a week with distance learning on the other days, or a full distance-learning system.
The dual language kindergarten program still requires in-person attendance, a decision that has caused controversy among some of the parents after their children won spots in the program in a lottery earlier this month. In that program, students spend half their day learning in English and the other half in Spanish, with rotating subject matter in each session and periodic assessments to make sure no one is falling behind.
Mr. Burns acknowledged "it's a tough choice" but said the logistics of the dual language kindergarten program are such that it would not be possible to implement remotely.
"You're learning two languages. Just learning one alphabet is a lot, let alone two," he said. "We don't have the resources to make that happen."
At John Marshall, enrollment is at about 550 students. That is about 60 more students than last year, but the numbers alone "are not a true picture" of the situation because some previous East Hampton families have left the district, Mr. Burns said.
Prekindergarten will be half day and starts on Sept. 10. A recent proposal to move the prekindergarten program to East Hampton High School has been taken off the table. "It just wasn't working," Mr. Burns said. "Our school physician said 'absolutely not' " for safety reasons and because changing around the architecture of the classrooms for the youngest children would have been too difficult.
The first day of school varies for different groups of students. Sept. 10 and Sept. 11 are half days for children in kindergarten and first and second grades who are doing in-person classes. For children in grades three through five who are doing remote learning, those two days will be for making contact and setting up technology.
Also on Sept. 10 and Sept. 11, half of the incoming ninth grade and half of the incoming sixth grade will report in person for orientation, each cohort on a different day. Both of those days will have remote instruction for high schoolers on that plan.
All programs will be in full swing starting Sept. 14.