Online Classes Being Replaced With In Classroom Instruction

The pandemic is once again changing up the classroom for some East Texas school districts.

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With fears of COVID-19 spreading at the beginning of the school year, the majority of East Texas school districts started off the 2020-2021 school year by giving parents and students different options when it came to attending school this year. Local school districts offered the option of attending classes in a traditional in classroom setting, by attending via online classes or through a hybrid approach with a combination of traditional and online with an alternating schedule. The majority of parents opted to send their students traditionally so they could get face to face instruction and learning from teachers while some 10 - 25% of students opted for online learning.

Now that the school year is underway and through the traditional first six weeks or nine weeks grading period, depending upon district, educators are seeing a drastic difference in grades among those students that are receiving in class learning versus online learning. School districts are finding that the majority of students that are enrolled in online classes are failing and falling behind. In an effort to reverse this trend, many school districts have or are in the process of ending remote learning and requiring students to return to school.

In addition to grades, many of the districts that have chosen to end remote learning have also reported low number of COVID-19 positive cases among their student and staff population. As with any rule there are exceptions; many districts will still offer remote learning for students that have a medical reason or for students that will need to be isolated or quarantined due to exposure of COVID-19 or a positive test result.

Letters from local school district superintendents have been going out over the past few weeks. I received a letter from my daughters' charter school district two weeks ago with news that her school would be moving back to in class instruction beginning October 20th.

The following is a list of school districts that are requiring students to return to traditional in class room instruction along with the start date: