Norfolk parents want to know: What about us?
NORFOLK — While some students in Chesapeake and Virginia Beach have been welcomed back to in-person instruction in recent days, Norfolk schools have announced no similar plans.
Over the summer, the Norfolk School Board decided in a 6-1 vote to start virtually and continue online at least for the first nine weeks of the year.
Now, while other school districts begin a shift back to the classroom as measures of the region’s coronavirus cases trend down, some parents in Norfolk are wondering: Where’s our school district plan?
“If our sister cities can make this happen, surely Norfolk can as well,” one Norfolk mom of two wrote in public comments ahead of Wednesday’s School Board meeting. A number of other parents expressed similar sentiments, though some still thought it was smart to keep students home in case of a spike in cases.
The administration will present a plan to the School Board during next Wednesday’s work session, Superintendent Sharon Byrdsong said at the start of this week’s meeting. Byrdsong then handed the meeting over to Dr. Demetria Lindsay, health director for Norfolk and Virginia Beach.
Of those parents urging Byrdsong for a plan to return students, many asked to prioritize the district’s youngest learners first. They say virtual learning has fallen short of meeting students’ needs.
“I hope that NPS sets forth clear metrics for bringing students back and prioritizes the youngest students for whom hastily-planned virtual education is entirely developmentally inappropriate,” another parent wrote. “At the very least, I would urge that our youngest students have a substantial paper component to their classwork, rather than being expected to complete tasks on a computer without being taught the literacy necessary to navigate a computer.”
Still, not all who shared public comments think it’s time for kids to go back. A parent of a first-grader said he prefers in-person learning but noted health experts were projecting a significant increase in COVID-19 cases this fall. It would be detrimental, he said, for students to go back to the classroom only to be pulled back out due to a spike in cases. He thinks the district should stay virtual for another nineweek quarter.
During Wednesday’s meeting, Lindsay went over recent metrics tracking coronavirus cases. After a surge over the summer, the Eastern Region of Virginia has seen a downward trend in cases.
The region’s case incidence rate, which measures cases per 100,000 population, was 7.6, which falls in a moderate range. Anything lower than 5 is considered low; anything above 10 is considered high. As of Tuesday, the rate was a little lower in Norfolk at 5.6.
Cases in Norfolk have slightly increased for the past three days, but it wouldn’t be a trend unless it moves one way consecutively for 14 days, Lindsay said.
Unlike Norfolk, families in Chesapeake had a choice between an all-virtual first semester and an on-campus option. About 66% of families chose the in-person option, though administrators kept them home at first due to high numbers of cases regionally. Chesapeake released a plan this week outlining how it intends to start phasing back fourththrough 12th-graders under a “blended” option, with some in-person and some at-home learning.
Virginia Beach this week welcomed back a second round of students to its buildings. Pre-K through second-graders have started back with more coming soon.