Orange County schools start academic year
Amid controversy and worry, students return to classes Monday
Orange County’s public school students return to classes Monday, the first in Central Florida to usher in a school year that will be marked by required face masks, deep teacher unease and a reliance on online education in the face of COVID-19.
Orange’s students will start the year at home, turning on their laptops to log into live, online classes, following the same “bell schedule” used on campus. Nearly 30% have signed up to shift to in-person classes on Aug. 21, when Orange campuses open for students. The rest will continue to study online.
“It’s going to be a little different,” said Orlando mother Cassie Mortimore, with a smile.
Mortimore stopped by OCPS Academic Center for Excellence in Parramore on Thursday to pick up a laptop and workbooks for her 8-year-old son, Chaz Holloway, who is starting third grade. She’s having Chaz and her two older children, who attend Jones High School, study online for now because she helps care for her 80-year-old grandmother and doesn’t want any of them infecting her.
“I couldn’t risk it,” she said. The academic year will start in Orange as teachers, and their unions, argue statewide that schools should not be opening at all, given the number of coronavirus cases in Florida. Three
lawsuits, two filed in Orange, challenge the state’s efforts to compel public schools to open this month.
In preliminary legal hearings this week, the Florida Education Association, which filed one of the lawsuits, said state leaders were being “reckless” in ordering schools to open this month with in-person classes. Though state leaders insist their order gave local districts leeway, most took it as a mandate, and after intense debate almost all are opening this month for face-toface instruction.
The Seminole County school district will be the first in Central Florida to open its campuses, with students starting face-to-face lessons on Aug. 17. The Lake and Osceola county school districts will follow Orange and open Aug. 24. All are offering both online and inperson options for parents, with fewer than 50% of students in the region expected for face-to-face classes.
State leaders have said they want schools open for face-to-face instruction because that is best for most students and that option should be available to parents who want or need it so they can work.
One Orange mother, writing on the district’s Facebook page, said that is why her children will be on campus starting Aug. 21: “I can’t quit my job and I don’t think I can afford a person to come into my home 5 days a week to watch and teach my children either.”
Though on-campus is an option, Orange school leaders have encouraged parents who can keep their children at home to sign them up for online options, reducing the number of students on campus and the number of teachers who must work there.
The school system already issued district-owned laptops to all of its middle and high school students and some of its elementary school students. This summer, it bought more than 23,600 laptops and more than 10,700 iPads so that all students could have devices to keep at home for the 2020-21 school year.
They’ve increased online capacity, too, to accommodate thousands of students and teachers logging into their platforms at once.
On campus, district leaders say they’re implementing lots of new safety rules, from required face coverings to enhanced disinfecting routines to new classroom configurations to create more space. Schools have been sent face masks and face shields, jugs of hand sanitizer, extra thermometers and canisters of sanitizing wipes.
New campus signs read, “Face Masks Are Required.”
But Orange’s teachers union, which also filed a lawsuit against reopening, said Thursday that the school district’s “unsafe re-opening” plan “threatens the health and lives” of teachers and students. The union complained safety protocols were not stringent enough.
Though some teaches are happy to return to their classrooms, hundreds of teachers also have been assigned to teach in person against their wishes and are fearful they will get sick or bring the virus home to their families, said Wendy Doromal, the union’s president.
“They’re panicked. Panicked,” Doromal said.
Travis Washington said his wife, who has taught at a county elementary school for 11 years, is upset she is assigned to teach in person. She requested to work from home because their 5-year-old son, who is about to start kindergarten, has a history of serious respiratory problems.
They don’t want him on campus but he can’t be at home without a parent. Washington said his job requires him to report in person, so they were hoping his wife — who didn’t want her name or the name of her school used — could work remotely.
“It’s like we don’t have a choice,” he said. “Especially my son. He doesn’t have the same choice as other kids have because my wife is a teacher.”
His wife is gathering their son’s medical records, hoping school leaders would reconsider. “She loves the job too much to just walk away from it,” he said.
Scott Howat, the district’s chief spokesman, said the district tried to accommodate teachers’ requests, giving priority to work at home to those who because of age or health conditions were at higher risk of complications, should they catch the virus. “We tried to do that as best we could,” he said.
Charles Mack, whose 5-and-10-year-old sons are OCPS Academic Center for Excellence students, said they will do school from home for now, with their grandmother helping them out.
“My kids will be home until the numbers come down,” Mack said.
Online learning won’t necessarily be easy, he conceded, especially for his youngest. “It’s going to be a challenge,” he said. “I’d rather them be a challenge, than them being sick.”