Students at Monroe County Community School Corporation high schools will have the option to take in-person classes five days a week this school year.
The MCCSC Board of School Trustees approved addendums to its reopening plan, including adding a five-day in-person week for high schoolers, during its special meeting Tuesday night.
Board member Brandon Shurr said he was concerned the five-day week would impact the decisions of families who chose the school corporation’s hybrid plan because it meant fewer students would be in school.
“I don’t support this because I think that we are going back on what we had sort of promised for the high school students, as far as class size being a lot smaller ’cause of the hybrid method. We won’t really have a hybrid method anymore in some degree because those two to three days the kids are there, they’ll be with a whole number of kids that weren’t supposed to be there in the first place.”
Bloomington South principal Mark Fletcher said nearly 1,200 of 1,700 South students had responded to a survey on the five-day week, and of those students, about 60 percent were interested. Of the remaining 40 percent who have answered, 20 percent favored the hybrid schedule and 20 percent preferred online only.
“So 70 percent of our students, if these responses remain consistent, would be in school every day,” he said. “That’s huge for us, because 30 percent won’t be. So, if you think about an average class size of 30, with 30 percent not there, that takes us from 30 to 21 [students in a classroom]. The importance of that number is most of our classes will be able to maintain six-foot distancing with at least 24 kids.”
Fletcher said those numbers wouldn’t remain uniform throughout the school, but if the averages hold, Bloomington South should be able to maintain proper distancing.
After Fletcher’s presentation on the South reopening plan, board member Jacinda Townsend Gides asked how contact tracing would work. Would a student who tests positive for the coronavirus be removed from school? Would the entire school have to shut down?
Assistant Superintendent Andrea Mobley says the Monroe County Health Department will handle each situation on a case-by-case basis and determine the proper response.
“They ask questions about, ‘What were the symptoms?’ ‘When were they with this person?’ They ask all kinds of questions,” Mobley said, “and then they advise us based on those answers to those questions on what we should do.”
According to Mobley, that could mean one or two students being removed from classes for a period of time, as opposed to an entire class or even the entire school.
“That’s why it’s important to take attendance, important to have the social distancing,” she said. “Because it may be minimal disruption. It may just be a few students that have to go intermittent learning for a few days so that we can assess the situation.”
Board member Brandon Shurr proposed three changes to the school corporation’s reopening plan. He said things had changed significantly regarding COVID since the reopening strategies were first drawn up, so MCCSC should pause its plan for reopening, much like the state itself.
“I make these motions on behalf of the over 1,900 people who signed the ‘Time to Revise MCCSC Re-entry Plan’ petition,” he said.
The changes include:
Delaying the start date for MCCSC students
Starting the 2020 school year online
Creating a completely new re-entry plan
All three motions were tabled until the board’s next meeting on July 28. Board members said they wanted to hear from Monroe County Education Association president Paul Farmer about a new teacher survey that is being conducted.
School starts August 5.
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