Hybrid learning frustrates officials
The School Town of Highland began the school year online. And then it switched to in-person learning. And then it switched back to online. Soon, it will return to in-person again.
It’s stressful, but Superintendent Brian Smith said when the school year began, he knew it was going to consist of a lot of back and forth.
“We all kind of felt like that was probably going to be this year,” Smith said. “In my administrative team, too, our message is — and I’ve used this term a whole bunch — we’re going to muddle through this school year. We kind of figured that was probably what was going to happen. We always had it in the back of our minds.”
The district began the year with online learning before switching to in-person Sept. 28. Just under two months later, on Nov. 23, the district returned back to online learning. As of Dec. 2, Highland has plans to return to in-person on Monday.
“We kind of figured this was going to be one of those years where it was in out, in out, in out,” Smith said. “We just knew it was going to be a frustrating year … maybe it’s frustrating, but it’s not surprising.”
Currently in Indiana, there are 1,234 new student COVID-19 positive cases, 311 new teacher positive cases and 368 new staff positive cases as of Dec. 3, bringing the total to 11,677 positive student cases, 2,486 positive teacher cases and 2,899 positive staff cases throughout the state, according to the Indiana Department of Health.
As of Thursday, in Lake County, the current seven-day positivity rate is 16%, while Porter County sits at 12.3%.
Portage Township Schools, too, began the year online. The district switched to in-person Oct. 20 and switched back to online learning Nov. 16. They will continue with online learning until Jan. 8, according to a Dec. 1 message sent out by Superintendent Amanda Alaniz.
“The Porter County Health Department has been providing us with updates and guidance; additionally, we have been assessing our ability to adequately staff our schools and provide a safe and healthy learning environment,” the message says. “After reviewing this data, we have decided that the best and safest course of action will be to continue learning from home.”
Director of Communications and Community Engagement Melissa Deavers-Lowie said there are plenty of factors that go into moving the district online, such as COVID-19 numbers, the Porter County Health Department data and the district’s own dashboard data in terms of quarantine and positive case numbers.
“We’re also taking a look at staffing, and making sure that we can appropriately staff our schools,” Deavers-Lowie
said. “There were a lot of factors, in addition to looking at those county statistics as well, a lot of factors in our decision.”
Similar to Highland, DeaversLowie also said switches between in-person and online was something Portage Township Schools was ready for.
“It’s something that we always kind of have in the back of our minds as a possibility,” she said. “It’s something we had to prepare and plan for. We’re committed to bringing our kids back in person … but I think we also knew that if we look at those numbers and we continually monitor those numbers and it became better for our students to switch back to virtual, we had to be prepared to do that as well.”
Even with the back and forth, the goal is to get students into the classroom as much as possible, Smith said. They learn best that way, but the district will continue the back and forth for as long as it’s necessary.
“If I’ve learned anything from this whole experience starting last March, it’s that things change so fast,” he said. “You have to be ready to pivot and change with what the data shows.”