High school set to resume in-person classes next week

Like other district schools, WHS will operate on a hybrid model

WOONSOCKET — By Tuesday, Woonsocket High School is on track to look and function more like a normal high school than at any time since last school year – if the restart of in-person classes isn’t shut down by snow, that is.

Weather forecasters were still watching a developing Nor’easter on Friday, with predictions from the National Weather Service for up to 6 inches of snow in the region between Monday and Tuesday.

The snow dump happens to dovetail with the Woonsocket Education Department’s plans for putting Grades 10-12 back in class on a hybrid model. Their arrival is slated to begin on Tuesday – a week after Grade 9 classes resumed, also for the first time.

Between the pandemic and a lack of substitute teachers, school officials have said reopening Woonsocket High School for live teaching just wasn’t feasible this academic year – until now, anyway.

Meanwhile, students at other grade levels have been

in school for some time on the so-called hybrid model, with varying degrees of success. The Pothier-Citizens Memorial campus, for example, just reopened on Friday after the two elementary schools were closed down for contact tracing and quarantining of students and staff. The switch

to remote learning came after one individual who had contact with school staff tested positive for COVID-19.

It was the second time the sister schools in East Woonsocket were closed due to the pandemic this year.

“We’re continuing, unfortunately, to close classrooms across the district as students and staff test positive,” Schools Supt. Patrick McGee told members of the School

Committee during the most recent meeting on Jan. 27.

However, school officials are trying to avoid closing entire schools whenever possible by limiting the disruption in live classroom teaching to only the small-group “pods” where positive cases are detected, McGee said.

“We’re doing our very best, our nurses are doing their very best, to monitor and make sure we’re quarantining based on

the recommendations of the Department of Health whenever it’s necessary,” he said.

With most of the school district now on the hybrid model, school is a live-classroom affair for students only two days a week. Monday is a remote learning day for the district. The rest of the student body is split in half, with each slice reporting for classes on two days, depending on the first letter of the last name. Students

whose last names begin with A-L report on Tuesdays and Thursdays; M-Z reports on Wednesdays and Fridays.

In addition to the universal remote Mondays, hybrid learners are supposed to be doing remote lessons from home on the two days a week when they’re not scheduled to be in school.