Runcie: Broward schools should be online for now

Broward County Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie is recommending to the School Board that students should begin the new school year “100%” online if the COVID-19 pandemic does not improve.

Runcie made the announcement Tuesday during a virtual workshop to discuss potential reopening plans. The next meeting is scheduled for July 22.

“When we open schools in the fall, I’m recommending that instruction will be 100% e-learning” if conditions do not improve and it continues to worsen, Runcie said. “That is the only way we can educate our students while keeping them and their teachers healthy and safe.”

Runcie said additional options, including face-to-face learning five days per week, will become available as conditions improve, but that for now, online learning seems to be the best, and safest, option.

“Given where we are now, and the trendlines that we just heard — and they’re not getting better — I don’t see how literally within a month that we would be able to open

Runcie schools in a manner that we desire to do,” he said.

Deciding whether to completely or partially reopen schools is a difficult decision school officials in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties are also grappling with as Florida — and the White House — push to have schools reopen for face-to-face learning in August.

Palm Beach County Schools Superintendent Ronald Fennoy plans on recommending to the School Board Wednesday a 20-21 School Reopening Plan which includes starting the school year online followed by a “staggered” return to face-to-face learning once the county enters Phase 2.

The Palm Beach County school district’s School Board, which showed support last week during a workshop to have the school year begin online if COVID-19 cases continued to increase through the state, will then vote on what the start of the 20202021 school year will look like for public school students.

The state will then need to approve the school district’s reopening plan.

Miami-Dade County Public Schools also hasn’t announced how exactly school will start this fall but Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has previously said that schools would not be able to reopen for faceto-face learning until the county enters Phase 2 reopening plan.

As of Tuesday, MiamiDade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, the epicenter of COVID-19 in Florida, are in Phase 1.

Once in Phase 2, MiamiDade County Public Schools will have different learning options available, including face-to-face and online learning to accommodate families depending on what parents indicated in an online survey at http://news. dadeschools.net/ cmnc/new/30599.

The deadline to submit a preference is Wednesday.

Broward County Schools says it received more than 132,000 responses in the survey it sent to parents.

The survey, which ended on July 10, had the following results:

32 percent of families wanted to continue online learning in the fall.

35 percent want hybrid learning (a mixture of faceto-face and online learning).

31 percent want 100 percent face-to-face learning.

In a survey of Broward Teacher Union members released Tuesday, 69.6 percent of the 10,811 members who responded said they preferred to contine working remotely online.

And 93.9 percent said masks should be mandatory “for everyone, everywhere, at all times.”