Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
District plans return to remote learning
SOUTH COVENTRY » With the number of coronavirus cases rising, the Owen J. Roberts School District is preparing for the eventuality of halting its in-person hybrid instruction and returning to a virtual model on Nov. 23.
The discussion about the possibility occurred during the Monday, Nov. 9 meeting, according to Superintendent Susan Lloyd, who issued a warning letter and explanatory video to parents the same night.
In the letter, Lloyd wrote that “health department guidance in
dicates that if we remain at this level for three consecutive weeks, we will need all regular education students to return to virtual learning.”
The letter states that both Chester County and the municipalities which comprise the Owen J. Roberts School District have moved beyond the 40 to 80 cases per 100,000 and/or a testing positivity rate above 10 percent.
“While we do not have linked transmission in any of our schools, the transmission rate in Chester County is increasing exponentially,” Lloyd wrote in response to a query from MediaNews Group.
“All predictions are those numbers are only going to continue to grow,” said Lloyd.
In addition to returning students to an all-virtual program, “we would need to temporarily suspend athletics at that time,” she said.
Even if the numbers drop below the “very high” threshold, Owen J. Roberts High School students would still remain in virtual education “because that is the area where we’re having to quarantine the most number of students and staff,” Lloyd said.
“We’re not seeing transmission in the district, but students and staff there are coming onto contact with positive cases and have the quarantine,” she said.
Athletics would also remain suspended at that point.
However, students and staff in grades K through 8 could return if the numbers go low enough and would do so under what Lloyd called “an expandedblended model.
Under this model, instead of each group of students coming in two days a week, each group would alternate coming in three days a week, then two days a week, while the second group did three days a week.
Should the numbers drop even more, “and I know this is the scenario everybody wants,” the district could consider returning to five days a week, “but only of the health department relaxes the rule about keeping six feet of physical distance,” Lloyd said.
Lloyd explained that “we just don’t have the capacity to have all students in the classroom and to keep them six feet apart.”
Besides, she added, that particular scenario “is a long way away.”
The school board voted on Sept. 29 to begin a phased return to in-person classes on Oct. 12, meaning students and staff will have been back a little more than a month before rising coronavirus numbers will send everyone back to learning remotely.