Districts to make plans for 2021-22 school year
Schools set to decide this summer on in-person, online learning
Kids can often be more supported by school staff when they’re learning in the building. It’s something districts always knew, but the pandemic solidified.
So, thinking ahead for next school year, many districts are hopeful they’ll be able to return to fully in-person learning. The decisions for many will be made over the summer after assessing the infection rates in the area, officials said.
“I think that most kids would find learning more authentic and engaging if they’re in class working with their peers, working in groups,” Jeff Hendrix, School Town of Munster superintendent, said. “And from the social and emotional side of it — the SEL part, the social-emotional learning — we just feel like we can support kids socially and emotionally when they’re at school versus being at home.”
In addition to having the ability to gain support and work in groups, Hendrix also said Munster has a few programs, such as an entrepreneurship program, that would be difficult for students to do from home.
The district will likely make a decision in July, Hendrix said, noting that many students in the district have already been back in the buildings for this school year. While Munster currently has an online learning option, Hendrix said it would be difficult to continue doing every day after the pandemic.
“In terms of doing it full-time every day, online learning, I don’t see us doing that,” Hendrix said. “I believe that in-person learning is the best approach to take with kids. I do think technology can play a part, I think there’s things you can do with flipping the classroom or doing blended learning where you still use the technology for things at home.”
Lake Central School Corp. Superintendent Larry Veracco said the district will also make its decision this summer, and based on infection rates the area is currently seeing, he’s hopeful they will also be able to return to full in-person learning.
Veracco said while the district
plans to assess the infection rates and hopefully return to school as it was prior to the pandemic, he believes some students and families may show an interest in continuing online learning, in which case the district will investigate different alternatives, such as using outside vendors to provide the bulk of online instruction to keep students enrolled at Lake Central.
“We do think that there are going to be some people, going into next year, that say ‘We liked doing eLearning, we’d like to keep doing it,’ then we have to make a philosophical decision — do we think it was as good for the students, and do we want to keep being that sort of provider of eLearning and live instruction, especially at the secondary level,” he said.
Currently, the district sits at about 80% in-person, and Veracco said for the most part, they haven’t had many clusters of spread within the school. As of data updated March 17, the district recorded four positive COVID-19 cases in students and six positive cases in staff.
With teachers and school staff now having the ability to be vaccinated, Veracco said many seem more at ease with being in the school building than they were months ago.
“Our staff is a lot more comfortable, as many of them have gotten their first dose,” Veracco said. “As more of our educators become comfortable, taking that topic off the table is better because no matter what anybody says, there’s a direct correlation between age and negative outcomes.”
Micah Pollak, associate professor of economics at Indiana University Northwest, recently spoke on in-person K-12 school instruction as well as the spread of coronavirus in Indiana at a TEDx-style talk at IUN.
Pollak said he’s unsure if the pandemic will fundamentally change schools in the long run, though if things continue as they are now in the fall, schools may change ventilation systems or reassess distance requirements between students.
“I think it really depends how it plays out, probably this fall,” Pollak said. “In one scenario, the vaccines are effective, the variants don’t really matter too much and everybody happily goes back to the way things were before in the fall. If that’s the case … we would just mentally roll it into being just another flu, and I don’t think it would fundamentally change schools. But on the other hand, we might still have kids wearing masks in the fall, maybe they’re not vaccinated yet.”
With the end of the school year looming and the beginning of the next just around the corner, many districts will be keeping an eye on the state and county data, assessing what’s best for students and staff, to make a decision for the 2021-2022 school year.
“With vaccines and with the infection that we’ve already seen, if we continue to drop, then our decision — which probably needs to be made in early June — if it continues down that path, would be to go back to what we did prior to this current school year,” Veracco said. “Which would be, we’re not a provider of online learning, we’re a provider of in-person learning … We’d really like to have everybody back in person. We believe it’s superior.”