By Dan Murphy
As parents and students prepare to begin a new 2020-2021 school year, Superintendents, school boards and teachers unions have been working to find a way to keep everyone in their district safe while educating their students.
While the vast majority of Westchester school districts are proceeding with some type of hybrid learning that includes a combination of in person learning and online education from home, at least four school districts in the county are returning with elementary and middle school students returning to the classrooms every school day.
The Mamaroneck, Byram Hills, Bronxville, Briarcliff and Somers school districts are the four that we have identified as having the resources and room to spread out their younger learners to enable attendance in school every school day.
In Briarcliff, elementary and middle school students will attend school daily. In Somers, all K-6 students will attend school daily, with grade 7-12 students attending altnerating, A and B days in school and online.
The Bedford schools will have K-2 students in person five days per week, The Tuckahoe School District will have K-3 students in person every schoo day, and the Hendrick Hudson schools will have K-5 students in class five days per week.
School districts with higher students enrollment and with only one high school were unable to bring any portion of their student population back to school five days per week. White Plains High School students will attend in person one day per week. Mt. Vernon and Yonkers will have high school students attending two days per week, and most Westchester high school students will be attending in person learning 2 or 3 days per week.
Superintendents across Westchester were faced with competing opinions, with most parents looking for their children, especially younger children, to return to school evey day, while many teachers unions were more inclined to support online learning.
In upstate New York, a revolt by parents and taxpayers demanding that schools return to normal, includng in school learning every day, has resulted in headlines and media coverage, but no resolution. That is because many school districts were unable to come up with a viable plan to return all students to the classrooms every day because of space restrictions, transportation concerns, and the ability for the district to clean and disenfect school spaces in the COVID-19 environment.
Some of the wealthier school districts in Westchester were able to provide their parents and students with more in class school time, because of the fewer number of total students, students per class, and school spaces that could be transformed into temporary classrooms.
Even with remote learning the reality for all Westchester school district in some form, some administrators are requiring their teachers to come to school every day and teach at school, even if there students are remote learners.
“The thought was that teachers can teach in a more professional manner if they are in fact educating from their learning spaces. Some of the complaints I heard from parents was that some teachers were not ready to teach when the Zoom class started. For some teachers who don’t want to come back to school, they may have a difficult decision to make,” said one Westchester teacher.
During the pandemic, some parents have posted online expressing concerns about some teachers and their inability to educate online. Teachers also expressed their concerns about maintaining the focus of their students, especially younger students, for 30 minutes or more.
The other concern in school districts with more need is to make sure that students have online learning devices in their homes. And for students and their parents who don’t want to go back to school for Coronavirus fears, they also have the option of full time, online learning.
Some school districts are using one remote day per week to bring in smaller groups of high need students. One of the most popular options for hybrid learning is to have all students in school for two days a week and have one day, usually Wednesday, reserved for entirely remote learning. 16 out of 51 Westchester school districts have this option.
