Fayetteville-Manlius, Jamesville-DeWitt school districts prepare for more in-person teaching

F-M, J-D SCHOOL DISTRICTS – With Onondaga County’s new relaxed guidelines for social distancing in schools, local districts are moving ahead with plans to open their buildings for more in-person instruction.
Last week, Onondaga County Health Commissioner Dr. Indu Gupta announced that the required space between desks can be reduced from six feet to three feet with partitions between students. The county is currently in the process of purchasing partitions that will be deployed to schools.
That change will allow Fayetteville-Manlius and Jamesville-DeWitt to shift away from the hybrid models that have been employed since the school year began and move to fully in-person instruction. Both districts will continue to offer remote learning for students who don’t want to attend in-person classes because of COVID-19 concerns.
“We’ve heard from many families who would like their children to be able to attend school in person each school day,” said J-D Superintendent Peter Smith. “This change allows us to be able to offer that option and resume some form of ‘normalcy’ for our students and staff.”
Jamesville-DeWitt has employed a hybrid model for students in grades two through twelve. Kindergarten and first grade classrooms have operated at five days a week since the start of the school year.
Fayetteville-Manlius wrote a letter to parents last week indicating the district had not yet made a decision on whether to move forward with a five-day school week or a four-day school week. In its current hybrid model, some students attend school in person on Mondays and Tuesdays while others attend on Thursdays and Fridays. On Wednesdays, all students are remote and that day is used for communication between teachers, students and their parents as well as deep cleaning at the school buildings.
“Teachers will still need time to prepare lessons for both remote and in-person learners and be available to connect with remote students, and in some cases their parents, individually through virtual meetings,” the letter states.
Neither district has announced a date for the change.
“We are working to make this change take effect as quickly as possible,” F-M Superintendent Dr. Craig Tice said. “We have been planning for this shift as our goal has always been to return students to the classroom full time. Now we need to finalize such details as bus routing, ordering partitions, returning furniture to classrooms and the cafeterias and ensuring desks are properly spaced, re-staffing our food service department and determining which students will be learning in-person and remote.”