What's Happening With Schools by Jonathan Byrnes

    This year is certainly one for the history books, but could the awful events of 2020 ever end and bring us something good? The Australian bushfires, Kobe and Gianna Bryant's tragic death, the shocking death of Chadwick Boseman, the stock market crash of 2020, the death of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, the arrival of murder hornets in the United States, and the deadly Corona Virus, aka COVID-19. This year has been filled with several tragic horrors that have scared us all but now the school year has started. With COVID-19 cases rising coast to coast, it's now a matter of what the school districts feel is best for their students. Each school district across the country is taking a different approach to starting schools and some are successful while others not so much. School board members have spent months on end coming together to find a practical solution for getting their students back into the classroom safely while keeping the COVID-19 cases limited to none.

    Georgia school districts took a different approach towards reopening their schools, receiving criticism along the way. Gwinnett County, the largest school district, offers in-person school and virtual school for its 180,000 students, but both options are struggling to stay afloat in this dire time. The online system struggled to launch successfully with parents complaining about the struggles students face with logging into the online system on the first day of school. Only a few weeks after starting all virtual, kids were given the option to go to school in person, but to the general public, that was an epic fail. According to ksat.com, "more than 1,150 students" were put into quarantine due to possible exposure and that was a "one-day increase of more than 300 children". With 180,000 students in the Gwinnett County School district, officials should've planned for an outcome like this. Smaller districts across Georgia are facing similar problems with students and staff quarantining shortly after resuming classes.

    Although South Carolina students of the Rock Hill district are going back to school, "board chairwoman Helena Miller" faced "the hardest decision of her life" head-on (ksat.com). Through hours of discussions, hours of looking through policy documents, and taking the community's input, "the safety of 17,000 students" was the top priority (ksat.com). If school was to return to in-person, would teachers be able to safely teach these kids? Would the school become a petri dish for COVID-19? Many questions similar to these were flowing through the head of Helena Miller as she came to her final decision. Miller decided to "split students into groups and stagger the in-person days at school" (ksat.com). 

    New Jersey schools were given the option to use a hybrid schedule, where some kids would go into school one week and then a different group would go to school the next week, or you could stay virtual. The Sparta school district chose to give students the option to select whether they wanted to do the hybrid or virtual option. Although, amid the rising concerns from teachers and knowledge of what is happening with schools across the country, the Sparta school district ended up going all virtual. However, it is expected, for the kids who selected the hybrid option to go back to school after the first few months of remote learning.

    Due to the increasing numbers of COVID-19 cases throughout high school students, remote learning will continue until further notice. COVID-19 is spreading like wildfire among student-athletes due to poor choices made by students. Athletes on the football team and girl's soccer team got COVID-19 and, unknowingly, started passing it on to others before they knew they had the virus. Soon more and more athletes were getting COVID-19 causing the school to shut down all sports for a 2-week quarantine where everyone is rushing to get tested. The middle school will also remain virtually until further notice due to one staff member testing positive for COVID-19.   

   

    It's not all bad news since the district is allowing any K-5 students who selected the hybrid schedule to return to school. All students K-1, with the hybrid schedule, will be allowed to return to school on October 5, while all students 2-5 with the hybrid schedule will be allowed to return to school on October 12. With the hope that everything will run smoothly for these young students, they will be a test for us older students looking for a quick return to school. If the hybrid schedule doesn't work out for the K-5 students, likely, 6-12 students will not be returning to in-person school for awhile. It is with hope that the hybrid schedule works because remote learning is not the best when it comes to long periods spent on the computer.

    To put it plainly, learning remotely is a good idea for something like a snow day, but five times a week for who knows how many months, it's just not going to work. On the 2nd day of school, I personally missed two of my four classes due to internet problems. These internet problems weren't just a household issue; it was a district-wide issue with students missing classes and stressing out about what they're missing while teachers struggled to get in a sentence before getting kicked out of their own meet. Every day, students and teachers face slow internet, glitchy and laggy meets, problems with their audio. Remote learning has its pros for allowing us students to wake up later but, in reality, it causes anxiety and stress. The start of this school is one that I will remember for the rest of my life. I will always remember the stressful days with no internet, the days I just wanted the school year to be over with already, and the days that I was simply grateful for being able to do my school work from home.