Bulloch County Schools administrators have been notifying the parents of about 500 students who were in “virtual” learning-from-home programs first semester that they will be required to return to face-to-face school second semester, which begins Jan. 6.

A chart provided to the Board of Education on Dec. 10 counted 510 students in the “district-required return” category. These are in addition to the more than 1,600 students in the virtual program whose parents previously requested that they return to face-to-face school.

“In our conversations and plans for moving forward into second semester, we had lots of concerns about students who were not engaged or not making adequate progress, and so we’ve decided to require those students to return in January,” Assistant Superintendent for School Improvement Teresa Phillips told the board.

An exception will be made for “medically fragile” students who qualify for hospital/homebound services, she added.

That evening, Phillips and Executive Director of Curriculum and Instruction Kelly Spence led a report on plans to help returning students catch up while also supporting  those who remain in the virtual program or were already attending face-to-face. The board also heard from one principal each from the elementary, middle and high school levels.

Others returning

Previously, the families of 1,512 virtual-option students had indicated by an Oct. 28 deadline that they would be returning to face-to-face school second semester, and families of another 133 students filed their requests after the deadline. With school officials intending to honor all of these requests and also to require the 510 to return, the school system could have 2,320 students remaining in the virtual programs in January, and 8,161 students expected to attend face-to-face.

This is also after families of 122 students requested a move in the opposite direction, from face-to-face to virtual instruction.

So overall, about 22% of Bulloch County Schools students are expected to be in the virtual program in January, down from 46% at the start of the school year in August.

The chart did not list any numbers of “district required return” students at the high schools.

At least at some grade levels, virtual-program students have access to their virtual learning platform – Edgenuity for middle and high school classes or SchoolsPLP for elementary school classes – through Jan. 3. High school students still “non-engaged” as of Jan. 4 will be required to return to face-to-face instruction, but high school students who are engaged in online coursework but not making adequate progress will get another chance through an individualized academic contract.

Returning teachers

“You can see there are a large number of students who are returning second semester, so there are also a large number of teachers who are returning second semester,” Phillips said.

At the beginning of the school year, 127 Bulloch County Schools teachers were assigned to provide guidance and supplemental instruction for students in the virtual option. They included 74 elementary school, 27 middle school and 26 high school teachers.

After 44 elementary school and 15 middle school teachers and one high school teacher return to teach face-to-face, 30 elementary, 12 middle school and 25 high school teachers are expected to be working full-time with the virtual program in January. These were the Dec. 10 projections and did not include a few teachers who work in both virtual and face-to-face roles.

Meanwhile, principals at the elementary, middle and high school levels have been planning for how to help returning students catch up. Not only have administrators acknowledged that the interactive “virtual” learning programs do not work well for some students, other students referred to as “non-engaged” have not completed the online work in half of their classes for a month or more.

Principals of the nine elementary schools have met almost weekly for more than two months discussing some of these topics. They arrived at a couple of major realizations, said Brooklet Elementary School Principal Mike Yawn. He told the Board of Education that this was his opinion, anyway.

“Number one, we figured out that the need at every school is different, and I think that it’s more accurate to say, the need in every grade level at every school may be different,” Yawn said.

He also made an observation about the breadth of the learning gap that some students have experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, since the schools first closed in mid-March before reopening with virtual and face-to-face options in mid-August.

“The number two thing was that we realized that some of these kiddos have been out for 10 months,” Yawn said. “We’re not going to find a solution that in one semester is going to meet the needs and close all of these gaps.”

So, teachers and administrators are planning for intervention and remediation efforts that can be continued through calendar year 2021, he said.

For all students, the elementary schools will be putting renewed focus on “need-to-know” math and English-language arts standards, he said. For students who have learning deficits to various degrees, a “tiered intervention” approach will be used, with assessments of students’ needs and flexible scheduling so children can spend more time on their areas of greatest need.

“Intervention groups,” such as those for guided reading or a focus on math skills, would be created either within a classroom or with students from several classrooms. Transition classes, and having previous virtual teachers who return to face-to-face school remain with their returning virtual students when possible, are other ideas the elementary school leaders had discussed.

William James Middle School Principal Julie Mizell, on behalf of the middle schools, and Portal Middle High School Principal Julie Blackmar, on behalf of the high schools, presented ideas, which are similar but with different details, for those grade levels.

The schools will continue to monitor the progress of students who remain in the virtual program, and virtual students will now be required to return to school to take some assessments, such as the iReady diagnostic, face-to-face, Spence reported.

For students who begin to show insufficient progress in the new semester, an academic contract will be developed with the parents and then monitored by the school, she said.

A generic contract that parents accepted whenever they chose the virtual option for their children states: “Students will be expected to complete lessons each week and make adequate progress towards standards mastery.”