Written By: CAMILLE PHILLIPS | JUN 17, 2020
With much still unknown about what the coronavirus outbreak will look like in the coming months, the Northside Independent School District has developed a flexible framework to reopen its more than 100 campuses this fall.
Despite wanting to bring as many students as possible back into the classroom, a survey of parents and staff during the first week of June made it clear to Northside administrators that some form of online learning will need to remain in place.
According to the survey, one out of four Northside parents aren’t comfortable with sending their children back to school in fall.
Initially, almost half of the 14,454 parents surveyed said they weren’t comfortable with the idea, but that number dropped to 27% after they were informed of Northside’s plans to keep students safe.
With much still unknown about what the coronavirus outbreak will look like in the coming months, the Northside Independent School District has developed a flexible framework to reopen its more than 100 campuses this fall.
Despite wanting to bring as many students as possible back into the classroom, a survey of parents and staff during the first week of June made it clear to Northside administrators that some form of online learning will need to remain in place.
According to the survey, one out of four Northside parents aren’t comfortable with sending their children back to school in fall.
Initially, almost half of the 14,454 parents surveyed said they weren’t comfortable with the idea, but that number dropped to 27% after they were informed of Northside’s plans to keep students safe.
Middle schools and high schools would follow a similar format, with some groups either attending on alternating days or waiting until it was safe for the entire group to attend every day.
Whatever the final plan ends up being, Woods said it was clear that a more rigorous distance learning system capable of measuring student progress would be needed.
“We know that what we did in mid-March was just get it out there, and we know the bar is going to have to raise,” Woods said. “And we’ve got to be nimble enough that if a classroom had to be closed for whatever period of time that we could transition those students from in-person to distant overnight and that it would be seamless for the kids and that learning would not be lost.”
Pointing out that COVID-19 cases have risen since Northside surveyed parents and staff, trustees asked the superintendent how it would decide to close schools or even districts.
“I’m not sure that I have confidence that the state is actually going to pull back in time,” Trustee Karen Freeman said. “Are you all thinking about what that scenario might look like? Just because we can be open doesn’t necessarily mean that we should.”
Woods said that he was in conversations with other superintendents in the region about making joint decisions, as they did in the spring, but they were a long way off from setting a specific threshold that would trigger closures.
