The plan, proposed on February 1 at a meeting of the Atlanta Board of Education, has not yet been decided, but would focus on the unfinished learning that dates back to March 2020, when schools closed for the first time, said Superintendent Lisa Herring.
Students across the country have spent much of the past year learning remotely in an effort to mitigate the spread of the virus, and many fear the disruption has left them with less education and development experience.
While some teachers question whether it is still safe to return, authorities in cities across the country are pushing to bring students back to the classroom and make up for lost time.
“When we are able to identify those students who are not proficient and above, and we know that they have had interrupted learning and that there have been losses, we should not be thinking about the need to keep them in front of us so that we can support and accelerate the closing of that gap ? “Said Herring. “And that represents a very specific population.”
That population includes vulnerable students from an educational and socioeconomic perspective among the 51,000 students in 87 schools and five programs in the district, said Herring. To that end, she said the district is looking not only at the summer schedule, but at the entire school calendar.
“We are looking at the calendar. I think we need to,” said Herring. “We started with four weeks in which we said, throughout the whole day, with a focus on the quality of instruction and intervention and monitoring, as well as enrichment and well-being.”
Strike threats and lawsuits
On Wednesday, members of the Chicago Teachers’ Union will vote on a proposal to reopen after the union negotiated and threatened to strike against the Chicago Public Schools System and Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who were pushing for a return to face-to-face education. .
CTU said that teachers also wanted to return, but not at risk of health for themselves, their families and their students.
The proposed structure has pre-K and cluster students returning on Thursday, and the K-5 team returning on February 22 and their students next week. The 6th to 8th grade staff will return on March 1 with students returning on March 8, said Chicago Public Schools CEO Dr. Janice Jackson.
In California, Governor Gavin Newsom asked the state legislature for a $ 6.6 billion package to take students, teachers and staff back to classrooms, he announced on Monday.
Decision-makers have been discussing plans for the past few weeks and are approaching a resolution that would focus first on the youngest and most vulnerable students and go through the rest as possible.
The package follows the city of San Francisco suing its own school district on Wednesday to get schools to reopen their campuses. A provisional agreement was reached on Sunday to reopen if the city is in the orange layer of the state’s reopening criteria, or if it is in the red layer and vaccines are made available to teachers.
The district would also provide personal protective equipment for students and staff, classrooms and socially distant workplaces and regular testing, among other safety protocols.
“This is a big step towards a goal that we share with so many parents: the safe reopening of school buildings for students and staff,” said the unions representing workers in the San Francisco Unified School District.
In West Virginia, all teachers over 50 who said they wanted the vaccine have already received it, according to Governor Jim Justice. In Ohio, Governor Mike DeWine outlined a plan to vaccinate all teachers by the end of February, with the goal of all students returning to classrooms by March 1.
CNN’s Meridith Edwards and Elizabeth Stuart, Cheri Mossburg, Gregory Lemos, Omar Jimenez, Joe Sutton, Gisela Crespo and Yon Pomrenze contributed to this report.