COLOMBIA – All school districts in South Carolina must offer full weeks of face-to-face learning until April 12 and keep classroom doors open for the next academic year in accordance with legislation passed by the Senate.
The bill passed on March 31 without opposition ensures that students across the state can benefit from full face-to-face learning in the last month of the school year.
“I think there is significant support among party lines to get children back to school as soon as possible,” said Senate majority leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, on the unanimous vote that did not require a call.
“We all recognize the significant loss of children who do not go to school,” he continued. “We have all seen or heard from constituents about the insufficiency of long-term online learning for children, especially at the elementary and high school levels.”
The measure also prevents administrators from requiring teachers to take a double shift in the next school year in teaching face-to-face and online students, as many districts already plan to continue offering an online only option. And it gives districts more flexibility in rehiring retired teachers over the next three years, in an effort to help fill the shortage and get students back on track.
Whether the legislation ultimately requires a return in mid-April will depend on whether – and how quickly – the state legislature acts on it. The camera returns on April 6, after a week-long break.
Twenty-five of South Carolina’s 79 traditional school districts remain on a weekly mix of face-to-face and online learning. None are yet operating entirely online, according to the state Department of Education.
These numbers are already set to improve the post-spring vacation. Only seven school districts still expect to operate in a hybrid format on April 12. Three of them – Orangeburg and Sumter counties, and Florence 3 in Lake City – planned a full comeback a week later. Colleton County set a total return on May 3.
Greenville County, where elementary and high schools already operate on a full-week schedule, has not set a date for the transition of high school students to five days a week, but plans to do so in the coming weeks.
The only districts that have not planned a full return this school year are the two poor districts in rural Hampton County, according to the K-12 education agency.
State superintendent Molly Spearman applauded the Senate’s action, which guarantees that “all schools will be fully open for personal learning now and in the future”.
“Each family should have the option of sending their children to school five days a week, face to face, and science shows that this can be done safely in all communities,” she said, thanking the educators in the districts that made it available. the option throughout the school year. Nineteen – or a quarter of the state’s districts – offered a full return by Thanksgiving.
Many teachers protested on returning to the classroom before the wide availability of COVID-19 vaccines.
Teachers and other elementary and high school officials became eligible for vaccination on March 8, among some 2.7 million South Carolina residents who could apply for an injection. Many districts were able to quickly schedule vaccine clinics for their employees through pre-arranged plans with local providers.
Colleton County was the last district on March 31 to maintain a vaccine clinic, after the first was postponed due to the weather, said Spearman spokesman Ryan Brown.
It is not clear how many of the state’s 123,000 K-12 civil servants have taken advantage of the clinics and how many are choosing not to have an injection. Spearman’s agency is in the process of surveying districts, Brown said.
The state’s largest teacher advocacy group supported the project.
“The five-day return at this point is appropriate,” said Patrick Kelly of the Palmetto State Teachers Association. “It seems like the appropriate move in the best interest of our students.”
This follows not only teachers having access to vaccines, but also the federal government reviewing safety guidelines for proper separation in schools, from 6 to 3 feet, and sufficient availability of protective equipment, he noted.
In addition to the tens of millions of dollars in security items provided to districts by the Spearman agency last summer, the federal government allocated $ 3 billion to school districts across the state last year for local authorities to spend on a variety of items, including security measures.
But it is the other two provisions of the bill that make the group of teachers more satisfied.
Many teachers have had to teach essentially the same lesson twice this school year to students in the classroom and online. The measure would prevent this in 2021-2022, except in “extreme and unavoidable circumstances” and, when that happens, the teacher would have to receive an extra payment.
The dual instructional mode is “burning teachers and having a detrimental effect on learning because teachers’ attention is so divided”, they cannot afford enough time for any of the groups, said Kelly.
He also hopes that the ability to re-hire retired teachers at a salary of up to $ 50,000 a year without missing out on pension payments will encourage teachers to return to school. That would be a good use of federal stimulus money, he said.
“At the end of the day, remedying the learning loss will be reduced to one by one,” said Kelly. “We need as many instructors as possible.”
Clarification: This story was updated on April 1 to reflect that Greenville County school officials are planning a full return to high school classrooms in the coming weeks, but have not set a date for doing so. Information received on March 31 from the state Department of Education about districts that are not due to return in full by April 12 does not include Greenville County.
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