Some students rebuke mandate
Collierville High group fights full return in spring
One day this fall, an in-person calculus class at Collierville High School wrapped up with a few minutes to spare. It was either a Wednesday or a Thursday, the only two days students whose last names begin with letters in the alphabet range of L to Z, go inside the building. Ahead of the bell, the teacher abruptly posed a question to the class: Who would choose to come to school 4 or 5 days a week, if that became an option?
Taryn Miskowiec remembers the long pause.
“Then the majority of us ... we said that, regardless of what we ended up wanting to do, it just wouldn’t be a good idea for the school district to go back four or five days a week fully in-person,” Miskowiec said.
Eventually, she detailed why, point by point, in a letter signed by herself and 34 other classmates, sent to the district’s superintendent and school board members.
The letter cited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Johns Hopkins University, medical journals and local COVID-19 data. It acknowledged that the district was in a “difficult spot.” And it
highlighted the voices of students.
In the district’s view, heading back to school for four days a week instead of two will give students the best chance to improve grades; a report from late September showed 39.4% of all students enrolled at the high school were failing at least one class.
Still, the students wrote: “The parents are often asked about important decisions like this, yet they are not the ones who will have to deal with the direct consequences of these actions. We are.”
What the students are asking for
In the letter, students called on the administration to keep the hybrid schedule in place. Students have ways to socialize outside of school, they said, and don’t need to be in a school building to do so. Without students consistently wearing masks now, they’re concerned that would only grow and could contribute to more spread with more people in the building at once, potentially spreading to teachers.
The letter pointed to reported case spikes after holidays and mounting science showing that the virus has longlasting effects, with more research to be done. Plus, the students said, a return to “normal” school may signal to students that community conditions are improving, even if that’s isn’t the case.
The students wrote: “Going back to a normal, in person, 5 day a week school life could give the impression to many people that life is normal again and it is completely fine to have parties and large get-togethers with no form of safety protocols. This means an increase in super spreader events.”
Local health officials have continued to encourage vigilance in masking and social distancing, as well as other COVID-19 safety protocols, as the county enters its eighth month of the pandemic. Among school-age children, cases grew to a reported 18-21 per day for the final weeks of October, with most transmission occurring from extracurricular activities, David Sweat, deputy director and chief of epidemiology for the Shelby County Health Department, said Tuesday. Alisa Haushalter, the director of the department, has said transmission in schools is likely to mirror community transmission.
Collierville High School dealt early in the school year with a cluster of cases: two cases became five, 300 potential exposures were identified and the school decided to close its doors, learning of at least 20 additional cases among students and staff during the two virtual learning weeks in early September.
The cluster happened just as students were getting the hang of their hybrid learning routines, and even though students had the technology to keep learning at home, it was hard on Miskowiec and her peers, some of whom were also quarantining because of their potential exposure to another student.
“I think that’s why so many people started failing,” Miskowiec said, “because you have to be extremely adaptive to be able to go from hybrid to not being in class at all. And our teachers were expected to do the same thing ... I have a paranoid feeling that if we get shut down again, it’ll just be even worse trying to go from fully in-person to fully virtual and then back again.”
Collierville removes hybrid, offers 4 days in-person or virtual-only
As Miskowiec polished the final edits to her letter, the school informed students, staff and families that come 2021, the hybrid schedule would be gone. In its place, all students would be going to school four days a week, learning remotely on Fridays. The school wouldn’t be able to guarantee six feet of social distancing at all times, though it would aim for a minimum of three.
“Current hybrid students NOT comfortable with the expanded 4-days of inperson learning will have the opportunity to enroll in the CVA (Collierville Virtual Academy),” the announcement said. Students and families were given a week to decide.
Of the school’s nearly 3,000 students, around 30% chose to start virtual-only in the fall, leaving fewer than 1,000 students in the building on any given day among the two-hybrid groups. Numbers won’t change too much for the new year: 158 in-person students opted to go virtual, while 94 virtual students opted to shift to in-person, Collierville Schools Superintendent Gary Lilly said.
In addition to the students who are asking for the hybrid schedule to remain, he said, he’s also heard from students, parents and community members who don’t like the hybrid schedule. Initially moving to a hybrid schedule at the start of the school year, instead of a 5-day return, prompted parent protests.
The students who petitioned the school to keep the hybrid schedule in place are divided on whether they’ll be returning.
Senior Natalie Christensen and her younger sister Marissa both opted to move to all-virtual. Natalie, a senior who is close friends with Miskowiec, is unsure that students will properly social distance or wear masks when the campus population doubles, she said, noting she already encounters some students and a teacher who aren’t wearing masks like they should.
“I feel like I’d be more safe at home,” she said. Plus, Marissa is medically atrisk for more severe COVID-19 symptoms: “It is very concerning that people seem to be disregarding students’ safety and students’ choices on how they wish to go to school,” she wrote in the letter.
Many of Miskowiec’s friends chose virtual, but she decided to remain inperson. It was a difficult decision, she said, because “none of us know how this is going to affect us in the future.” What if circumstances change later this year or next, she posed. What happens then?
“I have a hard time understanding how we can have more people in the school, more people around each other, and not ended up having an outbreak that would get shut down,” she said, particularly after students will have likely traveled for the winter holidays.
Grades, attendance factors in schedule change
In a response, Lilly thanked Miskowiec and her classmates for their input, but said data showed that students were struggling with classes.
“I am very glad that the hybrid model has been satisfactory for you and others who signed the email. Unfortunately, our data has shown that it is simply not working for many of our students,” Lilly wrote. “From strictly an academic standpoint, we have seen a tremendous number of students struggling and even failing, which not only affects them now but can have lasting detrimental effects later.”
Data collected on Sept. 28 showed that a significant portion of students at the high school were failing at least one class, Lilly told The Commercial Appeal. Nearly half of the students learning completely virtually were failing more than one class, with virtual students performing worse than students who were in-person two days a week, he said. But of students going in-person, 40% were failing at least one class. In total, he said, that amounts to 39.4% of all students enrolled failing one class or more.
In addition to the increased number of students failing courses, he said, there were also attendance issues with students who were learning remotely.
Both Miskowiec and Natalie Christensen said that while academic scores matter, health and safety is still at stake.
“There should be more of a main reason than just grades, because there are ways to fix grades and help students at home,” Christensen said.
For the high school, the district plans to create a new schedule based on how many students plan to return in-person. The new schedule, Lilly told Miskowiec, “will allow us the opportunity to consolidate virtual and in-person classes, balance sections to allow for as much distancing as possible, and prioritize virtual sections for teachers with concerns.”
The class consolidation will be new, Lilly explained to The Commercial Appeal. Elementary and middle school teachers have had either in-person or virtual students, but not both at once; it wasn’t possible to split the staff in that way and still have a breadth of classes for students who wanted to be virtual full-time, he said. Shifting courses will cause changes to the master schedule, meaning some students may have new classes and teachers in the new year.
Still, students who are all virtual will miss out on some class offerings that require “specialized equipment” like welding, automotive, nursing, pharmacy and culinary courses, Lilly said.
“I’ve said many times that there are no great solutions in regards to the pandemic,” Lilly said. “We continue to make decisions based on the needs of students but with the understanding that families want and need options ... If nothing else, we’ve learned that there are no absolutes when talking about this virus and we all have to be flexible and ready to change at a moment’s notice.”
Both Miskowiec and Christensen would have liked to receive a more detailed response to their letter, they said. Miskowiec also pointed out that, as of last week, none of the school’s board members had responded to the letter.
At the brink of adulthood, the students are looking to have more of a say in their final years at high school. It’s frustrating, she said, to feel like there isn’t an outlet for her voice to be considered. She hopes adults communicate genuinely with kids.
“We’re teenagers living in a pandemic. And so obviously, (adults are) living in it too,” Miskowiec said. “But we’re trying to set our future up in the midst of a pandemic.”
Laura Testino covers education and children’s issues for the Commercial Appeal. Reach her at laura.testino@ commercialappeal.com or 901-512-3763. Find her on Twitter: @Ldtestino
“... they (parents) are not the ones who will have to deal with the direct consequences of these actions. We are.”
Collierville students in a letter to the district’s superintendent