Bibb County Schools planning for fall as COVID-19 presents evolving challenge

As school districts across Middle Georgia ponder what classes will look like in the fall, Bibb County School District leaders are weighing their options.

Nothing has been “locked in,” according to district superintendent Dr. Curtis Jones, but three plans have been developed that he hopes to present to the school board on July 7. The plans provide contingencies based on the spread and risk of COVID-19.

Plan 1: Low community spread

The first plan is for when the community situation for spreading the virus is low. In this plan, the students will be sent to school “as normal as possible,” which according to Jones, means schools will take necessary precautions; there will be social distancing, lunch in the classrooms, and staff, and possibly students, wearing masks. He said that parents may be asked to add masks to their child’s school supply list.

The district is looking at teachers, instead of students, changing classrooms, and in elementary schools, students would learn in cohorts of 15 to 20 kids. In middle and high school, students would stay in cohorts as much as possible and teachers would rotate rooms.

Plan 2: Moderate community spread

The second plan addresses a moderate risk of the virus spreading and basically splits the student body in half.

In this situation, Jones said there would be two cohorts. In Cohort A, students would attend school two days a week school, Mondays and Tuesdays and remote learn three days a week. Cohort B students would attend school on Thursdays and Fridays and remote learn three days a week. Both cohorts would learn from home on Wednesdays, which would allow teachers to hold office hours, correspond with students and prepare lessons.

Plan 3: High community spread

The third plan would be implemented if community spread presents a high risk. In that case, the schools would offer remote learning.

At the moment, Jones said he feels like the schools would fall under the moderate risk plan. Ultimately, the school board will decide which plan to implement, with input from the North Central Health District, which is part of the Georgia Department of Public Health.

“We’re going to present the plan to the Board of Education on July 7, and they will see all three,” said Jones. “If we open today… I’m hesitant to say what that model will look like. It looks like it may go under the moderate plan, but I can’t tell what it will be a month-and-a-half from now.”

With a school start date of Aug. 10, Jones said he doesn’t “see that date changing.”

Jones said he doesn’t think classes will ever be the same. Access to internet and electronic devices will be a part of a “new normal,” he said.

“Another big change is we did not have a virtual school before in Bibb County,” he said. “We have told parents we are offering that as an option. I don’t see us taking that back.”

Jones said that for the last five years, the Bibb County School System has been introducing virtual learning to their teachers and allowing them to have blended learning in their classroom, which has resulted in about half of the teachers being comfortable with it.

Three years ago, the county implemented the Bring Your Own Device program. Since the last semester ended on May 1, teachers were given three weeks of training on current district technology, assessment tools and curriculum.

Those three weeks of professional training, according to Jones, got all the teachers on the same page, which he speculates will “put (them) ahead in August.” The district added 10 days of virtual instruction so teachers and students can continue to familiarize themselves with the technology and online instruction methods.

“What our planning is saying, if this second wave comes, we will be prepared to respond,” Jones said. “If we are in the moderate to low risk plans and a second wave comes and we are told to shelter in place, we will be able to do that within a week’s notice.”

The district is in the process of buying iPads for kindergarten through second grades and Dell laptops for third through twelfth grades so that every student will have a device that works with the school’s system. Jones said the district should have those in place by the end of October.

Parent feedback

Parents and students have been providing the district with input through Let’s Talk, an online tool that allows them to communicate directly with schools or the district. Ultimately, Jones said there are two camps: parents who want students back in a school setting that is a normal as possible and those who aren’t comfortable at all with sending their kids back to school.

In the latter camp is Alexius Burney, the mom of Briley Burney, 7, who just finished first grade at Vineville Academy. A cancer survivor, Burney does not plan to send her child back to the classroom, if given the option.

Burney was happy with her child’s virtual classroom experience and said she always had access to his counselors as well as his teachers, who generally responded to messages within 15 minutes.

Almost immediately after the school closed, Burney said her son was given paperwork to do, but after Spring Break, he was assigned a laptop. She said the pickup process for the laptop was simple, with the school officials walking her through the sign-in process and inputting her child’s information to his assigned laptop. Once she got used to the system, it was easy. The teacher sent homework through Microsoft TEAMS for each of the main subjects as well as the specials, which were art and music. Originally, the school had a set schedule starting at 9 a.m. and going through 2:30 p.m.

“In the beginning, I’m assuming parents may have been overwhelmed with multiple children,” she said. “After that, they went to the computer with one major assignment with one subject per day for Monday through Thursday with Friday as the makeup day.”

In the other camp is Trixy Hanson, who has two children at Vineville Academy. She thought the “virtual classrooms worked out great,” but said she is 100 percent comfortable sending her kids back to school.

Her sons, Elijah Hanson, 11, who just finished fourth grade, and Andrew Hanson, 9, who just finished third grade, had never worked in a virtual classroom, Microsoft TEAMS or Zoom prior to the school closings; however, the school got the information they needed quickly, and they had very few problems.

“Mine were very self-sufficient,” she said, adding that she had homeschooled them for a couple of years prior.

In the beginning, their homeroom teachers dropped in the assignments each day, but after a few weeks, Hanson said the entire week of assignments was assigned all at once so the students could work at their own pace. As a result, her children were finished with the work in just a few days. Consequently, she wished they could have had some more “fill-in” work.

Kirbi Suddeth, who had two children at Porter Elementary said that while she thinks it is a good school, she felt that her first grader, Carter Suddeth, 6, who had an Individualized Education Program (IEP), really struggled with adjusting to the virtual classroom because she wasn’t given the tools to help him learn.

Since Suddeth works full-time out of the house, and her spouse works full-time with a more flexible schedule, when she came home in the evenings, she tried to help Carter. However, it was a struggle to get him to focus and understand the importance of doing his work. To complicate matters, she no longer had communication with his special education teacher.

“He didn’t have interest in anything we were doing because it wasn’t on his level …because he learns differently from other students,” she explained.

In addition to the virtual classroom challenges, Suddeth said that having to do work with her son so late in the evenings completely messed up his sleep schedule. While she understands the situation was “thrown on everybody,” she said there was no structure, and the assignments were repetitive material and worksheets he had already done.

Suddeth’s fourth grader, Cooper, 10, adapted more easily to working online. However, she didn’t feel like he had enough school work because he generally finished all of his assignments for the day in about an hour.