Why no virtual learning? Parents question Harrison County’s back-to-school plan
Most school districts on the Mississippi Coast have announced tentative plans for the first fall of the coronavirus pandemic, and the Coast’s largest school district won’t be offering a full virtual option.
Harrison County School District announced its plan this week, and parents told the Sun Herald they are left wondering why their children won’t have an option other districts are providing to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Harrison County ranks among the top 10 counties in the state for number of new cases for the second week in a row.
Some local districts are providing virtual learning only to students with medical issues that make attending school unsafe. These include Ocean Springs, Pascagoula-Gautier and Long Beach.
Jackson County is also pursuing a traditional re-opening, and Superintendent John Strycker told the Sun Herald that families can request an alternative to in-class instruction if they feel anxious about the risk of coronavirus, and the alternatives will include a mix of virtual and paper packet-based options.
Biloxi, Gulfport, Pass Christian, and Hancock County are offering distance learning to any student who wants it.
In Harrison County, students who provide their principal with “medical documentation of specific health reasons” they cannot attend school in person will be assigned to the district’s long-standing “homebound program.” It requires the school board to re-approve the student for at-home learning every 15 days.
S. Bradley is the parent of a child with asthma. She’s not comfortable sending him back to school, and she doesn’t think the homebound program, in which students typically get assignments from teachers and complete them on their own, is comparable to full-fledged virtual learning. She doesn’t understand the rush to re-open, much less to re-open with no alternatives for families like hers.
“The schools were closed when the numbers were lower, and now the numbers are higher than ever,” Bradley said.
Trang Pham-Bui, public relations specialist at Harrison County School District, said the traditional plan was selected based on the input of parents, through a survey that almost 10,000 people responded to. She said that nearly 72% of respondents supported the traditional plan.
On Wednesday, some parents told the Sun Herald they never received the survey. Others said the survey had been too vague. It included just two questions, and offered three options: returning to school, returning to school while following CDC guidelines for social distancing, and a “hybrid model” with a combination of distance and in-school learning.
The survey did not explicitly ask parents whether they would want to be able to choose between virtual and in-school learning for their kids.
Pham-Bui said that the homebound program would include some virtual instruction, and that more information would be released soon.
“Some of the details of the plan we’re still working out,” she said.
When the plan was posted on Facebook on Tuesday, it prompted a wave of responses from parents.
Sheena Lloyd has three kids who attend Harrison Central High School and Crossroads Elementary School. She’s also in her last year of nursing school. If she has to home-school her kids to keep them off campus, she’s prepared to do it.
“I can deal with possibly failing a semester in nursing school,” she said. “But I can’t deal with nothing happening to one of my kids.”
Alexandria and Alan Smith, who have a child who was supposed to start kindergarten in August, started a petition Wednesday morning asking the district to offer a virtual option for the fall. By Wednesday evening, it had nearly 300 signatures.
The Smiths have a personal reason to be concerned about the re-opening: Alan’s doctors say he almost certainly had COVID-19 in the spring, though he was not able to get a test amid the nationwide shortage. He didn’t really start recovering until June.
“If I hadn’t experienced that for myself, I would probably be on the other side of the issue,” Alan Smith said.
Having the virus was “life-changing,” he said. If he hadn’t been sick, he thinks he would be in the camp of people who believe it’s comparable to the flu. Instead, the Smiths can’t imagine sending their daughter to school as cases are rising in Harrison County. They have not yet decided what to do, but they know one thing.
“We won’t be sending her to Harrison County School District,” Alexandria Smith said.
Harrison County ranks among the top 10 counties in the state for number of coronavirus cases for the second week in a row.
The school board has a meeting on July 20. Jenesis Lewis, a parent of three students in the district, said she plans to attend to speak out in favor of a virtual learning choice.
“It’s not fair to me as parents that we are not provided the option,” she said. “Pass Christian just put out theirs, they’ve provided an option. Gulfport has, Biloxi has. Please tell me why Harrison County School District cannot do the same.”
This story was originally published July 16, 2020 at 5:50 AM with the headline "Why no virtual learning? Parents question Harrison County’s back-to-school plan."
