Palm Beach charter school gives hint of new environment
From the morning temperature checks to half-empty classrooms to the staggered dismissal, face-to-face learning looks a lot different these days in one South Florida school.
While most Palm Beach County schools will open their campuses Monday, Renaissance Charter School inWellington got a head start, giving a preview of what parents might expect in the face-to-face enviroment — assuming everything goes as planned.
If Renaissance is any indication, students will have plenty of room to spread out. Only 42% of parents decided to go back to the school. The rest are learning virtually form the same teachers instructing kids in the classroom.
The day starts with a school official greeting parents in their schools. Parents use their cellphones to scan a code where they must enter their child’sname, any illness and whether they’ve traveled outside the country recently. Their foreheads are scanned for a temperature reading.
Although parent volunteers are normally a key part of the school’s success, they aren’t allowed on campus in most instances rightnow. Theymust stay outside, waiting for someone to meet them if their student forget their lunch or medicine.
Inside, thewater fountains are taped off, but school staff will give water those who want it. Hand santizing stations are everywhere. A clinic room, or isolation room, is there for kids with symptoms. So far, no kids have needed it.
In a sixth grade language arts class, seven students are physically in class, while another dozen or so are at home.
“It feltweird at first, but itwas exciting to see how everything changed,” said Benjamin Mori, a sixth grader.
In Stephanie Leisegang’s sixth grade language arts class, a multidirectional desktop camera, known as an Owl, follows her around class. It allows the dozen students watching at home to be able to see her, even if she’s not by a computer.
Only about a half-dozen students are in the actual classroom. They’re allwearing masks, which they must keep on the whole day.
Sixth grader Benjamin Mori said he’s glad to be back in school, but he acknowledges it’s a little strange this year.
“We don’t get to do as many
things, and we don’t get to see as many friends. So many had to stay home,” he said. “It’s fine for right now, but if it continues for the rest of the year, it would be weird, because we might lose the bonds we’ve formed.”
Yaneylis Comacho has two elementary students staying home for the virtual program. She and her husband both got COVID-19 during the summer. She doesn’t want her kids to get it too. The virtual program works for them.
“They enjoy school and then after school they talk to their friends on FaceTime and play games online. They miss their friends, but they know the virus is dangerous,” she said.
Parents will be allowed to return to the in-school program after nine weeks, which will be in mid-October. But Comacho said she doubts she’ll return her kids to school until there is a vaccine.
Students on campus are closely watched by school staff. Elementary students generally stay in the same classroom all day, with different
teachers coming in to teach them different subjects. Middle school students change classes. They help the teacher clean and sanitize desks before and after teach class.
Students never take their masks off, except to eat in the lunch room where they’re kept 6 feet apart.
“We have thousands of masks, so if a kid doesn’t bring one, we provide a disposable one for them,” Assistant Principal Rachel Colavecchio said.
The school still offers classes like art and P.E., but they look different. In P.E., kids do individual stretching and guided exercises, sitting on tape marks, placed to keep them socially distanced. Kids at home do the same activities at home with the in-person students. In a drama class, kids were singing songs, their voices muffled through their masks, along with kids at home on a screen.
It’s only been aweek, but so far, it seems to be working out, Principal Christopher Glinton said.
‘It took a lot of planning, a lot of practice, but the exciting part is we have options for our parents and students,” Glinton said. “We missed our kids. We do this becausewe love our kids.”