JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Under Duval County school district’s current plans for reopening this fall, most students will be attending class only a few days a week depending on their grade level.
On Tuesday, Superintendent Dr. Diana Greene said she wanted to give parents options.
Right now it involves staggering attendance in order to ease the transportation burden and of course, keep everyone at a distance.
The plan outlined by Greene breaks attendance schedules up based on the grade the student is in and gives families options for their student to have some time in brick-and-mortar schools or none at all.
For elementary school students, there are three options.
Parents can choose to send them back to in-person learning five days a week. The only exception will be the district’s normal “early release” days. On early release days, which occur once a month, students will participate in their partial day through home learning, while school buildings undergo a deep cleaning.
The other two options include full-time remote learning through the district’s virtual classroom Duval Homeroom -- an option that allows students to return to their school at the end of each grading period.
The third option is full-time remote learning through the Duval Virtual Instruction Academy, which means the student would have to withdraw their enrollment at their regular school for the whole year.
6th graders will have the option to go four days a week to brick-and-mortar school with Wednesdays used for cleaning and remote learning. That grade can also choose full-time Duval Homeroom or the virtual academy option.
The rest of the grades have two options, split their time each week between in-class and online learning or full-time through DVIA. 7th-and-8th graders would be in the buildings three-days a week, high schoolers would only have two days of in-person classes.
The district is building a website for families to have all the information about it’s reopening procedures and safety protocols.
That site is expected to be launched by July 4.
Several parents who spoke with News4Jax said they didn’t think the scheduling system is going to work for most families others said they’re happy with the options.
“It just does not make any sense to me that they’re basically closing off these children from interacting with each other,” said Amber Hearman, parent to a Duval County student.
“I think they overall did a really great job of trying to find a good balance between social distancing interaction and get letting the kids having social engagement as well,” said Latonia Jackson, another Duval County parent.
“I was actually surprised that they offered as many options as they did that were tailored to the ages and I was impressed with that,” said Jean Chin, Duval County parent.
Other parents commenting on News4Jax.com wrote about concerns over the cost of the reopening plan and the limited student interaction.