As the first grading period of the 2020-21 school year comes to a close, Macon County Schools officials and families share concerns that students aren’t learning enough during their in-person/digital hybrid schedule.
The Oct. 19 meeting of the Macon County Board of Education provided more evidence to back up that worry. STEM coordinator Jennifer Love updated board members about how families have utilized the school system’s virtual academy. The number of virtual-only students has declined, but to the board’s surprise, the number of students enrolled for just distance learning has been fluctuating in both directions for some time now.
“We started the school year with just over 900 students enrolled in the virtual academy,” Love said. “This morning, when I polled the administrators, we were down to 678. When I spoke, especially with Franklin High School, they said they see fluctuations anywhere from six to 10 students per day registering for the virtual academy or coming out of the virtual academy.”
Although the central office has only given parents permission to transition their child from in-person instruction to the virtual academy and not the other way around, most Macon County Schools still allow parents to change their student’s enrollment status as they wish if they feel that their safety or educations is at risk. Love said that as more COVID-19 cases have been discovered at schools, including new cases at Highlands, Franklin High and South Macon Elementary schools, many parents have pulled their children from school for a few weeks only to send them back when quarantines are complete. There are some interesting disparities, however, in how enrollment changes at each grade level.
“K-5, we’ve seen more students transition from virtual back to face-to-face,” superintendent Chris Baldwin said. “On the other hand, at the high school level, we’ve seen more students transition from face-to-face to virtual.”
While keeping students safe is the board’s top priority, there have been concerns that virtual learning is not teaching kids well enough. Franklin High School officials texted a message to parents recently, acknowledging that an above-average number of students have failing grades through the first nine weeks.
Board member Stephanie McCall has been a longtime critic of distance learning and argued that the chaos of constantly switching schedules was only making things harder for the kids.
“Four days a week, I think it gives some consistency to their education,” McCall said. “Hearing from some people, I think that makes their parents feel better to have a little consistency.”
That consistent in-person influence is perhaps most necessary for the youngest students, who are thankfully getting more of it since the governor’s latest executive order. Curriculum coordinator Josh Lynch addressed the board members about the results of elementary school Istation reading tests. Unfortunately, scores on these tests are less than ideal across the relevant grade levels. Over the summer, Macon County Schools hosted 100 rising second- and third-graders in a 32-hour, two-week long day camp to help catch them up on their reading skills, but the percentage of at-risk students in these grade levels still increased from February to September.
“They do require a lot of intense, localized support throughout the district,” Lynch said. “We do have some growth, yes, but we also have a high number who are at risk, especially at this point in the year.”
Macon County Schools has more wireless hotspots to give out now than it did at the beginning of the year thanks to help from the state government and from Fontana Regional Library.
“The state called a few weeks ago and asked how many more Jetpacks we would need to get every student who needed one a Jetpack, and the number I got from the principals was 339,” said Macon County Schools IT director Tim Burrell. “We did get those Jetpacks in last week. We got 339 additional Jetpacks, as well as additional 62 Jetpacks from Fontana Regional Library. They did a grant to help the surrounding school districts, and so we’ll have enough Jetpacks, I believe, to get one to every student who needs one. That’ll give us about 520 Jetpacks.”
Just the same, Baldwin still emphasized that face-to-face instruction is the ideal way for children to learn. He hopes that the pandemic, corresponding state law and enrollment in the virtual academy will continue to deescalate in such a way that local students will get to spend as much time in the classroom as possible.
“We’ll continue to watch these numbers, and if our virtual student numbers continue to decline to the point where its possible that we may be able to assign teachers to be solely virtual and take that burden off of our face-to-face instructors, we may be able to go to five days a week at some point in the near future,” Baldwin said.