LIVERPOOL — “School’s out for the summer,” shock rocker Alice Cooper once sang. But next month, students in the Liverpool and North Syracuse school districts will be singing a different tune: Both districts plan to expand in-person classes in April.
Onondaga County released new guidance March 4 about the COVID safety measures schools must take for in-person learning. The previous requirement of 6 feet of distance between students has been halved to 3 feet with the use of face masks and barriers.
In a letter sent March 12 to families, North Syracuse Central School District Superintendent Dan Bowles said the district “plans to implement changes on a staggered schedule beginning April 12.”
“Our first target date is to shift our K-4 in-person students from two to five days a week (Monday through Friday) on April 12,” Bowles wrote. “The second target date of April 19 is to bring in-person students in grades 5-12 from two to four days a week (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday).”
Families of students in grades 5-12 have until April 7 to decide if they want to switch from remote learning to the hybrid schedule or vice versa. After April 7, the district will not accept requests to change a student’s placement.
“As a reminder, K-4 students transitioning from remote to in-person learning may be switched to a new teacher in their home school,” Bowles wrote.
According to a survey conducted by the district earlier this month, 71% of NSCSD families “indicated they would feel comfortable sending students for additional in-person learning.” Among hybrid-learning families, that number rose to 90%.
“The plan for our district is to bring students back for more days of in-person learning. Because some families and staff still feel unsafe, we will continue to offer remote instruction,” Bowles said in a statement on NSCSD.org.
North Syracuse began bringing secondary students back for additional in-person learning days March 1. C-NS and North Syracuse Junior High School students who previously attended classes Mondays or Tuesdays began attending both Mondays and Tuesdays, and students that attended Thursdays or Fridays began attending both Thursdays and Fridays.
Meanwhile, the neighboring Liverpool Central School District is hoping to resume in-person classes five days a week starting April 5 for students in grades 7-12.
“At this point in time, we feel confident that we will be able to transition our secondary students back to school after the March/April break as long we are able to secure partitions/barriers from Onondaga County,” read a message on the LCSD website.
The timeline is more fluid for elementary students, however, as Liverpool is waiting for Onondaga County to deliver the barriers.
“Students will begin to transition to in-person learning five days a week sometime after our scheduled spring break,” Rick Chapman, Liverpool’s executive director of elementary education, said in a statement. “I realize this is vague, but the exact date students will shift from our current hybrid model to five days a week is contingent on the delivery of the barriers.”
Liverpool Cohorts A, B and C will come together for expanded in-person instruction. The district will be contacting Cohort D — remote-only learners — to offer them the opportunity to switch to in-person classes, which may require a change of teachers. This will be the last chance to change a student’s status for the 2020-21 school year.
