Since reopening Aug. 25, Mount Vernon City Schools have used a hybrid system, with two days of in-person instruction and three days remote weekly.
So far, so good, according to the district.
“It’s been a successful start,” Superintendent Bill Seder told the Mount Vernon News. “We’ve had as smooth a start as possible under the circumstances.”
Not so good, according to some parents who have taken to social media to complain.
"My children are suffering tremendously from the lack of human interaction and most importantly the lack of being taught by a professional," Regenia Chambliss, recently posted on Facebook. "I'm just a mail lady, I have no idea how to 'teach' math or English."
Christine Burnside, a local grandmother, also voiced her concern on the Mount Vernon Ohio Talk Facebook page.
"This is stupid I have three grandkids in this system and it's so difficult on them," she wrote. "They need structure not this crap."
The school system has approximately 4,000 students in eight schools. Roughly 80% have opted for the hybrid model, with the other 20% choosing online-only instruction.
Students are socially distanced within the school by at least 6 feet, which required the district to remove some furniture from the classrooms. Additionally, all students are required to wear masks in the classrooms but can take them off at lunch and recess, the superintendent said.
Two staff members tested positive for COVID-19 just before the start of the school year and were never around students, Seder said. One teacher who taught online only in the school system’s digital academy also tested positive but had not been in contact with students.
Two students have tested positive, one who was enrolled in the digital academy only. The other student, who had been enrolled in in-person classes, tested positive over Labor Day weekend shorty after school reopened. No other students were quarantined.
“We certainly anticipate that going into this fall season, we’re going to be dealing, like a lot of districts have, with potential positive cases among both our students and staff,” Seder said.
When a student or staff member tests positive, the protocol calls for contact tracing to see if the person had close contact— within 6 feet— with others in the school for an extended period of time. If so, the people who were in close contact with the infected person may also need to be quarantined.
The school system is now considering its options for the second nine weeks of the academic year, which start in October. Parents, students and staff have been invited to take a survey to help the district proceed.
“Educationally, we are beginning to see some challenges,” Seder said. “The kids are doing a really good job while they are here at school two days a week. It's the time at home on remote learning that has increasingly become a little bit more difficult. The homework maybe doesn’t quite get done in a timely manner.”
Chambliss agrees with Seder on those points.
"I have watched my 9 year old slip into a depression because she is missing emails, zoom meetings, or simply forgot to turn her homework in on the 2 days she goes to school," she wrote on Facebook. "You want to know what hybrid learning has taught my daughter??? She has learned to half ass everything and she frankly doesn't care about the right answer. She's falling behind, not on assignments or her grades (because everything is graded by participating). Bad habits are being created because you feel it's better to be a hybrid system."
