While Daviess County Public Schools plans to allow students through the 8th-grade level to attend in-person classes on an A/B schedule beginning Sept. 14, roughly 90% of high school students will continue distance learning. Superintendent Matt Robbins said there were a number of reasons DCPS has pumped the brakes on high schoolers returning to the classroom.
Robbins was asked Monday about parents who’ve wondered why their high school children can’t attend in-person classes with the rest of DCPS students. Robbins said that was “a fair question,” but reiterated the risks associated with COVID-19 and high schoolers.
With college campuses across the nation experiencing heavy COVID-19 spread in recent weeks, Robbins said he felt the risk of exponential spread was too high for high schoolers as well.
“Unfortunately, our high school students are much like our college students in terms of socialization and the ability to be mobile. Many of them work jobs, and their exposures are a lot more at that level,” he said. “Not only at school but out of school — nights and weekends — they have many more risk opportunities.”
Added to that concern is the sheer number of students at DCPS high schools, Robbins said.
“When you’re trying to assign risk across the board, it drove us to selecting this schedule to mitigate risk,” he said. “… So when we look at assigning risk and need, we know the kids who need to see us the most begin at the earliest stage, and that’s kindergarten.”
Robbins said he believed the physical, mental and emotional risks associated with a lack of in-person learning decreased a bit with age.
“We also look at that with our students who are most capable of being digital learners,” he said. “We’ve been one-to-one with digital resources to students for over 12 years now. That means that our high school teachers are so much more capable of teaching in that environment, and our students have those resources to learn in that environment.”
While the orange light model does bar in-person classes for most high school students, it opens the door to in-person instruction in small groups.
Robbins said DCPS also hopes to give incoming freshmen a more traditional high school experience by conducting in-person tours of high school campuses in the near future.
“I have a huge heart for the freshmen — I call them graduated 8th graders because they’ve never truly arrived at their high school campus yet,” he said. “Yes, we’re teaching them online right now but they have not had their traditional orientation, indoctrination to high school. It’s a whole new experience for them, and so I’ve asked our high school principals to target our freshmen class and bring them in in small groups.”
Those plans would allow students to travel in small groups to go anywhere in the building. There would have to be 10 people or less per small group to meet state guidelines.
