About 15 percent of Charles City students choose remote learning to start school year

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

When school opens in Charles City next Thursday, about 15 percent of the public school students in the district will be staying home.

Those students will still be in attendance, however, participating and learning remotely through the district’s School-To-You program.

“These students and these families are choosing to stay remote 100 percent of the time,” said David Voves, teacher and TLC instructional coach at Charles City. Voves is one of four leaders on the district’s School-To-You program team.

Voves said teachers will be providing content through mini-lessons that are pre-recorded. They will be offering the same instruction as a student would be getting if they were sitting in the classroom.

The program will include Charles City teachers teaching lessons, making assignments, giving feedback to students and giving live online small group interaction. Families will also have access to nursing, counseling and school lunches if they need it.

“It’s just that they will be doing their learning digitally instead of in-person,” said Voves, who is setting up the program along with teacher and teacher-coach Marie Conklin, middle school teacher/librarian Naomi Yaddof and school counselor Scotti Hagensick.

“The School-To-You program will allow parents to make a decision that best meets their child’s needs,” Hagensick said. “So if they are on-campus learning and decide to move to School-To-You, they would be able to do that.”

As the school year opens, 217 students are opting for the at-home, remote learning program. Of those, 95 are elementary school students, 62 are middle school students and 60 will be in high school.

Voves said he foresees the number to be ever-evolving and changing as the school year progresses. Students can opt-in or opt-out at any time.

“There will be families that will want their children to return to school, but we expect there will be other families that will want to start digital learning at home,” he said. “Regardless of what children and family are choosing, we are going to provide that ‘Orange Experience’ to all of our families, whether on-campus or digital.”

Setting up the program has been a challenging endeavor, but Hagensick said that the staff and the parents in Charles City have been very supportive of the effort.

“I would say that in my experience working with the Charles City School District, we always find a way to support families, even in challenging times,” Hagensick said. “I think this is just another example of how we are able to serve families … and make sure all of their needs are met.”

“Teaching is all about resiliency,” Voves added. “Our profession is very much about being able to pivot, and really meet the best needs of the students. We are so appreciative of the patience of the staff and of our families as we continue to navigate this COVID season.”

Voves said that if the situation arises where there are students who have to quarantine, those students will “transition seamlessly” into the School To You program. The classroom lessons will be synchronized with the remote lessons.

Marcia DeVore, Lincoln Elementary School principal, has been chairperson of Charles City’s Return to Learn effort. She said that the district has established clear procedures should a student, staff member or teacher get sick with COVID-19 at school.

If the school is notified of a positive case of COVID-19 through Floyd County Public Health, the district will try to be as transparent as it can, DeVore said, although the school is not legally able to publicly identify a person diagnosed with COVID-19.

“We are trying to make sure the communication we are putting out to the community is thorough, and provides the information people need to make good decisions,” she said.

The district will publicly identify the school and the grade of the classroom affected and call each family with a student who was within six feet of the individual for at least 15 minutes. The district will also notify the community through an email, text message and will post information on its website.

The families of the students identified as close contacts “will absolutely be getting that in-person phone call and connection,” DeVore said. “Families should know that if they haven’t gotten that call, they needn’t be concerned about that.”

DeVore said the “within six feet for 15 minutes” metric is the CDC public health definition of “close contact.” The same procedures will be initiated whether the COVID case is a teacher or a student.

Floyd County Public Health will also contact the family directly if it needs to take additional steps.

If a group of students needs to quarantine, the School to You program coordinators will communicate with the class to begin the program as soon as possible.

“We know we can put these protocols into place, but we also have to take into consideration the unique circumstances of each and every situation,” DeVore said. “As we run the protocols, we will absolutely work with Floyd County Public Health to make sure the unique circumstances are taken into account with every case.”

The district has announced that it is critically important that students and staff who aren’t feeling well stay home.

Family members showing symptoms such as fever or chills, new cough, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, fatigue, muscle or body aches, headache, loss of taste or smell, sore throat, congestion or runny nose, nausea, vomiting or diarrhea should stay at home

Students awaiting results of a COVID-19 test should stay home from school until the test comes back negative. If a student or a family member receives a positive test it’s important to let the school know, and the family begins a quarantine.

The campus attendance office will keep track of students and staff with confirmed cases of COVID-19 and will communicate with those families when their 14-day quarantine is over and it is safe for them to return to school.

If a student doesn’t feel well at school, the teacher will provide a mask for the student if the student isn’t already wearing one, the student will be sent to the campus health room, and if the student’s temperature is over 99.9 degrees school staff will isolate the student until a parent can pick up the student.

“We are excited to have kids back in our buildings and we just want to do it in the safest and most appropriate way that we can,” DeVore said. “In our hearts, we’re teachers, and that’s what we want to be doing.”