On a roll, Peninsula schools will bring back middle-schoolers Feb. 25.
Even as 3rd, 4th and 5th-grade students flocked back to school last week, the Peninsula School District announced plans to bring back some middle-schoolers for hybird in-person learning starting Feb. 25.
In an email to parents, the district said it was “ready to begin the 6th-8th grade hybrid in-person learning model at the end of February.”
The district has four middle schools: Goodman, Harbor Ridge, Kopachuck and Key Peninsula.
Meanwhile, students in grades three to five poured off buses last week at the district’s nine elementary schools, resuming in-person learning for the first time in nearly a year.
“Words can’t express how happy I am that kids get to be here, and we get to be part of their lives in real life, instead of just through Zoom,” said Kristi Brooks, principal of Purdy Elementary on Friday. “It just warms our hearts.”
Gage Hendrickson, 11, a returning 5th-grader, was asked if he wanted to go back to remote learning. He answered through his mask with an emphatic, “No!”
“Because it’s harder,” he said. “And I would rather be in-person than looking at a screen all day.”
“I can tell the kids are smiling, even under their masks, and I’m smiling, too,” said Mary Bethe Beene, a 5th-grade teacher at Purdy, standing next to a readerboard in her classroom that said “Ready, Set, Learn!”
“This kids have just made it work,” she said. “I keep telling them they are pioneers. They’ve been put in a situation that is one day going to be looked back upon in history. And they’re stepping up and meeting challenges, and I think they’re just amazing. They inspire me every day.”
A Days and B Days
According to an email sen to parents, 6th-graders will return to middle schools first in order “to spend a day meeting staff and getting familiar with their new school environment prior to the return of their older classmates.”
The middle-school return schedule is as follows:
6th grade ‘A’ day first day is set for Thursday, February 25;
6th grade ‘B’ day first day is set for Friday, February 26;
6th, 7th and 8th grade ‘A’ first day is set for Monday, March 1; and
6th, 7th and 8th grade ‘B’ first day is set for Tuesday, March 2.
A spokesperson for the district told The Gateway that families will need to check their PowerSchool account for their A/B assignment and schools will email families when schedules as well as assignments are made.
The email said the district believes the current health metrics support an in-person return though it warned “health metrics can fluctuate widely and relatively quickly, so it is important to remember these plans may need to be adjusted as the environment evolves.”
As of Tuesday, Feb. 2, the district was reported 34 COVID-19 cases on all campuses, from among about 4,400 students and employees.
Twice-weekly sessions
Assistant Superintendent Dan Gregory said the students who choose in-person learning will come to school twice a week in two groups.
One group will come to the school on Monday and Thursday, the other on Tuesday and Friday. Wednesday will remain a remote day for all students.
“They will be in-person two days a week, six periods a day, and they will continue with their flex advisory period each morning as well,” Gregory said.
The email didn’t provide information about teacher reassignments, though it did say “it is possible that some students, both in-person and remote, may be reassigned to different teachers.”
“Roughly 25 percent of our middle school students and family chose to stay in remote learning,” Gregory said. “We have been working through our staffing to assign teachers to the remote learning side. As we do that, adjustments in shifts will take place also within the building. We’ve done our best to overlap the schedules and have them coincide to a certain degree. That overlapping will provide greater consistency to the degree that we can make that happen.”
Shorter remote classes
Students choosing to continue remote learning will see the length of their class sessions “shortened to approximately 50 minutes,” down from 65-minute sessions.
Gregory said that this will not lead to an overall reduction in learning time.
“It’s relatively a wash, because they’re losing approximately 35 minutes per week and they’re picking up approximately an additional 35 to 40 minutes on Wednesday,” Gregory said. “We make that time up on Wednesday because they’ll have each of those classes for 40 minutes on Wednesday. The instructional minutes throughout a week really don’t change much at all if at all.”
The email said that remote learning will have “periods 1, 2, and 3 occurring in the morning every Monday and Thursday” then “periods 4, 5, and 6 will be held every Tuesday and Friday afternoon.”
The district said there will also be more information about in-person learning at a virtual parents’ night for each school before February 25, likely sometime after the mid-winter break.
Gregory said the district chose to make the parents’ nights virtual, rather than in-person, for safety reasons.
“Part of our purpose for a virtual parents’ night is to make it as convenient as possible and as safe as possible,” Gregory said. We just want to make sure that each building is able to address their protocols, specific to their building, and answer questions for parents.”
Vaccinations not required
Gregory said teachers will not be required to be vaccinated before returning to in-person teaching, “however, we are advocating for educators to get vaccinated as soon as possible and we hope that that occurs.”
Gregory said there will not be any additional bus routes as the district has already restarted “pre-covid bus routes” as of Monday.
“We think it will be sufficient, because we only have roughly 50 percent of the students coming in each day,” Gregory said. “We also anticipate that many parents will choose to drive their students into school.”
The email said schools will be continuing to abide by precautions such as physical distancing and mandated mask wearing. The district also had previously said they will be attempting some form of in-house testing program
Meals during winter break
PSD’s Nutrition Services Department will provide meal kits for children up to the age of 18 during mid-winter break, Feb. 15-19, the district said Thursday.
Meals kits can be picked up on Tuesday, Feb. 16 from noon to 1:30 p.m. at Evergreen Elementary, Purdy Elementary, or Gig Harbor High School. Each child may pick up a meal kit containing both breakfast and lunch items to last for six days. For the most current information, visit the Nutrition Services webpage at psd410.com. For questions about meals, call 253.530.1015.
Reach Chase Hutchinson at chase.hutchinson@thenewstribune.com
This story was originally published February 3, 2021 at 3:57 PM.
