The plan, proposed Feb. 1 at a meeting of the Atlanta Board of Education, has not yet been decided, but would focus on the unfinished learning process dating back to March 2020, when schools first closed, Superintendent Lisa Herring said.
Students across the country have spent much of the past year learning remotely to stop 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, officials in cities across the country are urging students to catch up with the class and make up for lost time.
“If we are able to identify those students who are not skilled and higher, and we know that they have disrupted the learning process and that there has been loss, shouldn’t we think about the need to keep them to us? can we support and accelerate closing that gap? ”Haring said. “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, Herring said. To that end, she said the district is not just looking at summer programming, but the entire school year calendar.
‘We look at the calendar. I think so, ”said Herring. “We started with four weeks of saying, throughout the day, with a focus on quality instruction and intervention and monitoring, and also on enrichment and wellness.”
Strike threats and lawsuits
On Wednesday, members of the Chicago Teachers Union will vote on a proposed reopening framework after the union negotiated and threatened a strike against the Chicago Public School System and Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who pushed for a return to personal education.
CTU said teachers also wanted to return, but not because of the health risk to themselves, their families, and their students.
The proposed framework has pre-K and cluster students returning Thursday, K-5 staff returning February 22, and their students the following week. Grade 6-8 staff will return on March 1 and students will return March 8, said Dr. Janice Jackson, CEO of Chicago Public Schools.
In California, Governor Gavin Newsom asked the state legislature for a $ 6.6 billion package to get students, faculty and staff safely back into class, he announced Monday.
Decision-makers have been debating plans in recent weeks and are approaching a resolution that would target the youngest and most vulnerable students first and go through the rest as much 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 preliminary 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 workspaces with social distances and regular testing, among other safety protocols.
“This is a major step forward toward a goal we share with so many parents: 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, said Government Jim Justice. In Ohio, Governor Mike DeWine has drawn up a plan to have all teachers vaccinated by the end of February, with the goal of all students returning to class 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.