Many parents think their kids are still safer at home
Broward schools want to welcome students back to campus, but many parents still don’t seem to think their children would be safe from COVID-19.
About 33% of students are now attending class at an actual school, up slightly from 27% in December but still the lowest in the state.
The small numbers come despite schools holding parent conferences, sending emails and making phone calls to try to persuade parents that schools are safe and a better learning environment. Student achievement has plummeted since most students started taking class virtually last March.
Some parents say they still have many concerns about COVID-19 or the quality of in-person education, which has been practically the same as online education for many students.
Lindsay Joly has two children at Eagle Ridge Elementary in Coral Springs, and one has been struggling academically, she said.
But she’s keeping her kids home.
“I know she might be making more progress if she were in school, but this is a global pandemic,” Joly said. “Instead of focusing on grades and tests, we should be changing expectations a little bit and focus on surviving.”
District officials say on-campus enrollment is considerably higher than in late October, when only 19% of students were enrolled.
“We see a significant increase in students returning to campus and anticipate further growth throughout the second semester,” said a statement from the office of Chief Communications Officer Kathy Koch.
School districts have received pressure from Gov. Ron DeSantis and Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran to get more kids back at school, saying the risk of the virus is low but the academic risks are great. District officials say there’s been little evidence that COVID-19 has spread at school, with most of the cases coming from off campus.
Suffering at home
Data shows the pandemic, and possibly virtual learning, have had a negative effect on students’ performance. Absenteeism and the number of students earning F’s have skyrocketed in all three districts in South Florida.
A state order required districts to automatically enroll any students identified as low-performing in physical schools, unless their parents object.
In South Florida, about 55% of students in Palm Beach County are expected to attend school in person when their semester starts in early February, up from 45% during the first semester. Miami-Dade expects to stay at 45%, saying a recent spike in COVID-cases has likely dissuaded many parents from sending their kids back.
About 12,000 Broward students have returned in recent weeks, bringing the district’s on-campus enrollment up to 69,000, district data suggests.
Jeanne Gray, who lives in Cooper City, decided to send four of her five children back to campus this semester. She has a fifth grade son enrolled in Florida Virtual School, a staterun, online-only school, and he’ll return in the fall, she said.
Gray said she kept her kids at home last semester due to the uncertainty of the virus and campus quarantines.
“I didn’t want to put them in school and then two weeks later, they have to come back,” she said. “I wanted to give them stability.”
After nine months of online education, “they were done. Done with Mom being the teacher, mother and disciplinarian. They were ready to go. When I sent my first grader back, he didn’t even look back to say goodbye.”
She said they enjoyed staying home at first, “but I could start to see the cracks with the kids,” both academic and mental.
“They were getting anxiety ridden and crying and acting out,” she said. “One child started to regress. I thought it was much better for them to return to school.”
So far, she said, they are doing well and they’re not sitting in front of a computer all day, a frequent criticism from last semester.
Getting back to normal
Broward has tried to lure students and parents back by making on-campus learning more traditional. Last semester, many students learned in large “overflow rooms” where they were educated on a computer by a teacher who was working remotely.
This semester, the district is trying to put students back into classrooms and has required 1,100 teachers with medical conditions who had been working remotely to return to campus. That’s led to a legal battle with the Broward Teachers Union that’s now in arbitration.
“We can and must do better for our students,” Superintendent Robert Runcie said. “We need all hands on deck. We need teachers in our classroom.”
The union argues that many teachers are medically fragile and if they quit or go on leave, they must be replaced by a substitute teacher. The district should also be able to accommodate remote assignments since on-campus enrollment is so low, union leaders say.
Runcie said some parents and students are taking a wait-and-see attitude before deciding whether to return.
“They don’t want to be warehoused and sitting in a gym or an auditorium,” he said. “They want to be sure they’re in a classroom interacting with a teacher.”