RACINE — The Racine Unified School District (RUSD) released its plan to get students back inside classrooms by March. The district says a survey sent out to 4,000 families showed that more than 50% of them wanted students back in the classroom, and the rest wanted virtual or weren’t sure split just about evenly.
The plan right now is to give families three options in March. First would be students returning to class four days a week with Wednesdays off. That would give teachers time to regroup and allow the schools to be cleaned. The second option would provide remote learning via a livestream where students could watch what’s happening in their actual classroom over the internet. Finally, there would be the fully virtual option which is taught by RUSD teachers, but not the student’s normal classroom teachers.
The return to in classroom learning will be a phased-in approach. On March 1, K-5 and 6,9,12th grades will return to classes. A week later on the 8th, grades 7 & 11 would return. Grades 8 & 10 would get back in the classroom on the 15th.
Over the weekend, several teachers and staff at schools held a rally against in-classroom learning until all of the staff can be vaccinated against COVID-19. District officials say more than 200 staff members have already had at least the first dosage of the vaccination and they believe all staff will have begun the process by March.
Nearly three hours of Monday’s school board meeting was dedicated to the subject. Several people spoke in person at the meeting and more than 70 others sent in email comments on the subject.