Changes at Collierville High
Students will be in class 4 days a week in March
Collierville High School will suspend its hybrid schedule for March, increase the number of students in the building.
Collierville High School will bring more students back to the building each day beginning March 1, the district announced Friday.
Students who opted for in-person classes are currently going to class two days each week, divided into two groups in order to make more room in the school for social distancing. Under the new plan, which takes effect March 1, all students will go to class four days each week.
All students will continue observing Friday as a day of remote-only classes. The district is dedicating Fridays to teacher planning and school sanitation, Collierville Schools said.
“With the local (COVID-19) data continuing to be very promising and encouraging,” spokesperson Mario Hogue said by phone, “we thought, ‘We know this is the best time to make that transition to in-person learning’” with all students.
Initially, the district announced last fall the high school would suspend the hybrid plan at the start of the new year, in part to improve the learning experience for the greater number of students who were farther behind academically than usual, superintendent Gary Lilly said at the time.
Since then, students, teachers and parents spoke out against the plan, saying it would be unsafe to have so many students in the building at one time. The district then announced it would keep the hybrid plan in place through January, and then again through February.
As of November, of the school’s nearly 3,000 students, about 70% were learning in person. The other 30% of students had opted for virtual-only coursework. When the district issued a new poll that fall after announced the hybrid plan would be suspended, 158 inperson students opted for virtual and 94 virtual students opted for in-person.
Parents can still make a learning change for their student by contacting their child’s assigned school counselor at the high school, the district said Friday.
Masks are still required of the students, and social distancing will be practiced “to the extent possible” in the school, the district said. The district said social distancing cannot be guaranteed on buses, and encouraged parents to provide alternate transit for their students. High school rooms layouts may be modified, physical barriers on student and teacher desks may be used, and some communal spaces will either be closed for use or have staggered availability, the district said.
As of Monday, the most recent data available, the high school had six active cases of COVID-19 among students and one among staff. Since the start of school, 127 in-person students have reported positive tests of COVID-19.
The high school is returning without the hybrid schedule as Shelby County Schools returns for the first time during the pandemic, with about one-third of the district’s 88,000 students heading back to classrooms.
Spokespeople for school districts in Arlington, Bartlett, Germantown and Millington confirmed their respective high schools are still operating on hybrid schedules.