TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Southern Arizona's largest school district is the last to set a date for hybrid or in-person learning.
Tuesday night Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo said the district plans to bring students back on campus the week after Spring break.
Trujillo says staff will return March 22.
Pre-kindergarten to fifth grade students will come back on the Mar. 24, and students sixth grade and higher Mar. 25.
If parents with children in elementary school aren't ready to send their kids back, there are options.
“We want to be able to offer either option A...100% percent fully remote, five days a week, five full school days--remote. Not on campus just at home or continuing to learn from home through our synchronous or asynchronous models. Then option 2 is a 100% full time return to campus. Five days a week, five full school days for the families that opt to do that. No hybrid learning,” said Superintendent Trujillo.
The plan for middle and high school students is a hybrid model.
Students would be on campus four half-days a week. Those who want to be remote, will also have half-days. Wednesday would be fully remote for everyone, so that the district can clean common areas.
“If you have thousands of students coming back onto the campuses you're going to have thousands of students that are going to be switching classes every 45-50 minutes. There's going to be crowding in the bathrooms. They're going to be crowding in the cafeterias. It's going to be harder to implement our mitigation protocols. So the only way to bring 100% of the students back, five days a week, is to implement thousands of schedule changes through a practice called cohorting,” said Trujillo.
The district surveyed parents over the past several weeks to see what they'd prefer. That survey showed about half of parents in lower elementary school preferred all remote learning,
Survey's also showed, 36% wanted full time campus learning.
More than three quarters of high school parents wanted students on campus full-time, or at least hybrid.
