A NEW SCHOOL YEAR IN A NEW WORLD
BY BRUCE MILLS AND KAYLA GREEN
Social distancing markers, face masks, hand sanitizer and parents dropping off kids in the parking lot with school officials for temperature checks are just some of the new looks to school this year. When the pandemic hit, schools closed without warning. After finishing the school year via emergency distance learning, districts spent the summer planning for what the fall would look like. Seeing as COVID-19 is still making an impact with widespread community disease activity reports, students will remain on altered learning schedules. In Sumter, classes began on Aug. 28 entirely online. Sumter School District board members and administration will reevaluate an in-person option every two weeks and launch a hybrid instruction model as an option for students when it is deemed safe to do so. The hybrid model will have students split into groups, with one group going to school for face-to-face instruction two days a week while the other group remains at home and learns online with teachers offering instruction live. The other two days, the groups switch. Wednesday is planned to be distance learning – not live instruction – for all students. WWW.THEITEM.COM/SUBSCRIBE 38
Administration have said about half of the district’s children will choose the hybrid model of instruction when it begins, and the other half will learn entirely virtually the whole school year. "It's been a true joy to have children back in the building," said Preston Spratt, principal at Willow Drive Elementary School, about the school’s LEAP Days in mid-August. "The teaching is going really well, our students are knowing that they are cared for, and we are getting to lay eyes on them." In mid-July, the state Department of Education required every district that planned to begin the year with full virtual instruction, including Sumter, to offer LEAP Days as a face-to-face orientation and evaluation for students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade before school officially starts. One of the state's intentions with LEAP was to have districts and schools touch base with certain students who went largely unaccounted for in the spring after the move to remote learning. But LEAP was considered a good evaluation and preparation method for all elementary- and middle-school students, given the sudden school closures in March associated with the spread of the virus.
