On Wednesday evening, during a special meeting of the North Schuylkill Board of Directors, North Schuylkill voted on a plan to move their hybrid students back to a 5-Day school schedule.
For the start of the 2020-2021 School Year, North Schuylkill offered students two options, hybrid learning or virtual learning.
The hybrid learning split the student population in two by Alphabet. Students with a last name starting with A-K, attended school Monday and Tuesday and learned virtually at home Wednesday through Friday. Students with the last name L-Z attended school virtually Monday through Wednesday and attended school on Thursday and Friday. Also part of this plan, students that had already chosen to attend school virtually, but changed their mind and wanted to attend school in person, would have to wait until October 1st, 2020 before they could return.
On August 26th, the board had met for a special session and voted that a decision would be made on moving the hybrid school students back to a 5-day schedule after 2 weeks of starting school pending Schuylkill County's COVID-19 positive rate. As part of the decision, Superintendent Robert Ackell was approved to have the ability to adjust the schedule as he saw fit.
Late last week, the district announced that it would be moving to 2.0 of their plan, which involved Kindergarten through 3rd Grade hybrid students moving to the 5-Day schedule. According to Superintendent Robert Ackell, the decision to move those students earlier was due to the younger students struggling with learning virtually.
The special meeting to revisit the hybrid plan was still held Wednesday prior to the board's workshop.
Dr. Ackell noted that the move of the Kindergarten through 3rd Grade students back to "in school" went well.
During the meeting, the board discussed for over 2 hours on how to move forward with moving the rest of the school's hybrid population back to a 5-day schedule as well as how to move forward with fan attendance to sporting events.
After a discussion, a motion was made and unanimously approved the following:
- Hybrid students from 4th grade through 6th grade at the elementary and 7th and 8th grade students would return to class 5-days a week starting Monday, September 14th, 2020.
- Hybrid students from 9th grade through 12th grade would return to class 5-days a week, starting Monday, September 21st, 2020.
- Virtual students that wish to return to school, must contact the elementary or high school office and request to return. Those students would wait a minimum of three school days before they could return, rather than wait until October 1st.
A motion was also made in regards to fan attendance to high school sports events.
- The school district will continue their original plan and will not allow any fans to attend any sporting events. The decision to allow fans at sporting events will depend on the passing of House Bill 2787 which passed the House and Senate on September 9th, 2020 and was waiting approval from Governor Wolf.
If passed, HB 2787 grants school districts the ability to set their own limitation on fan attendance rather than follow Governor Wolf's mandate of 250 attendees outdoors and 25 indoors.
If the legislation passes, the district will move to give each student participant two vouchers for two fans to attend. Those fans would bring the voucher to a sporting event, give the voucher to the ticket booth where they can pay for their tickets and then enter the stadium or gymnasium. The facilities committee will meet between now and when the bill passes to make arrangement and come up with a policy for all events.
This motion passed 5-2 with the 2 "no" votes coming from Board President Charles Hepler and Council Member Douglas Gressens.