Surveys: Some parents fear return to school amid virus

Surveys in a few school districts suggest Georgia may have a tough time getting parents to return their kids to school in the fall if the COVID-19 pandemic continues unabated.

One in 4 respondents in a new Forsyth County Schools survey said they are “not at all comfortable” sending students into school buildings in August. That could complicate reopening plans.

The 51,000-student Forsyth district has a leading reputation for online education. With relatively low poverty and high internet connectivity rates, the district has prioritized virtual education for days when weather forces closures. It works well enough when snow and ice linger for a few days, but the system wasn’t designed to sustain students for months at a time, and that showed last semester.

At a virtual school board meeting Tuesday, Forsyth Superintendent Jeff Bearden said online schooling was the least desirable option for fall.

An alternative, sending half the students into the buildings one week and the other half the next to allow for safer social distancing, would still require online learning half the time and would be “very challenging” for teachers and “disruptive” for parents, he said.

The north metro Atlanta district will not finalize plans for at least a month, but Bearden said the one remaining option, in-person schooling, would be the most desirable.

Most other districts are still making plans; some are still surveying parents. The much larger Fulton County, with 94,000 students, has a survey going now, with results and a board discussion about the fall expected next week. A Cobb County spokesperson said that district of 112,000 is still gathering feedback. DeKalb County’s school board will discuss fall plans for its 98,000 students next week, when it will also open a survey, with results not expected till July.

Still, Forsyth’s responses were consistent with those in two other, smaller districts.

Michele Taylor, superintendent of Calhoun City Schools in northwest Georgia, with 4,200 students, said Monday that about 30% of respondents in a survey that opened last week had expressed “some anxiety” about in-person schooling. Early County Schools in southwest Georgia, with 1,900 students, found a similar level of concern, with about 1 in 4 parents surveyed saying they didn’t want to send their children back, Superintendent Bronwyn Ragan-Martin said.