All Hancock County School District students to learn at home on Wednesdays
Starting next week, Hancock County School District students will stay home and participate in distance learning on Wednesdays, the district wrote in a letter to parents this week.
Superintendent Alan Dedeaux said the goal of the new schedule is to ensure everyone, from teachers to students to parents, understand how distance learning works. That way, if a campus ends up having to shut down to control coronavirus transmission, as Biloxi High did this week, everyone will be prepared. And families will know how to help their child learn from home if they’re required to quarantine for two weeks after possible exposure to COVID-19.
“We want to get everybody ready for distance learning, because we don’t know,” Deadeaux said.
Currently, 10% of the district’s 4,500 students are participating in virtual learning, Dedeaux said.
The state health department reported Tuesday that schools in Hancock County have so far reported one teacher and 14 students testing positive for COVID-19; during the week of Aug. 17-21, 57 students were quarantined due to possible exposure.
Because the Bay-Waveland district won’t open until after Labor Day, Dedeaux said that the Hancock County numbers are drawn only from his district.
Under the new plan, students will stay at home on Wednesdays while teachers report to school as usual. Dedeaux said he wanted to keep the new system as simple as possible. Teachers will incorporate feedback from students and parents as they go.
William Tucker, an English teacher at Hancock High School, said teachers generally welcome the new schedule. They’re now responsible for managing their on-campus classes as well as distance learning students, plus following and enforcing new coronavirus safety protocol.
“The general consensus for teachers is that it feels like we’re in kind of mid-October right now,” he said, though school started just a few weeks ago.
Having one day a week where all students are on the same page, or at least all learning the same way, will be “a morale booster,” he said.
Some parents commented on Facebook to express displeasure or questions regarding the plan.
“I wonder how this will work with my wife working from home, 2 kids all on satellite internet?” one parent wrote. “I am for it, but internet is killing us in my location.”
A number of parents asked how the program would work for kids without internet or computers at home.
The district’s letter said that students without those resources would be given “learning opportunities that do not require access to the internet.”
“Our teachers have become quite resourceful in finding ways to share information with students and families,” the letter said.
