The School district of Lancaster board meeting on Tuesday, January 12, lasted for nearly five hours. 

The overwhelming majority of public comments, from teachers, parents, and administrators, and students alike, voiced the opinion that kids need to be back in school for academic, social, and economic reasons. Many invoked the theme of equity: if other schools are in-person, what does it say about us if we’re not giving our students that same opportunity?

A week prior, the school board introduced a plan to give high school students the choice between five-day in-person instruction and completely virtual learning. This was, many felt, too stark of a contrast between options. 

Still other parents, teachers and students shared their alarm at the district’s consideration of in-person education plans, citing record cases of COVID-19 in the city, state, and country at large.

Naomi Main, a McCaskey Junior and one of the three high school students who spoke before the board, shared a student petition advocating for a return to the hybrid model. At the time of the meeting, the petition had received over 174 signatures. 

“To me, it is clear based on the number of signatures, as well as what I have heard regarding the percentage of kids who have opted to go to school face to face, that students are not happy with their options,” Naomi said. She then read a few of the comments from students advocating for the hybrid approach, all of which expressed concern at the district’s far-from gradual plan to return students to school five days a week. 

For months, the district superintendent, Dr. Damaris Rau, has been advocating for the social, economic, and academic health of students in urging the board to approve a plan to return to in-person learning. In the case of the district’s elementary students, who returned to a hybrid model on October 26 of 2020, Rau was the only school official advocating that the students stay in school past November 24 – a motion which the board voted unanimously against, citing rising COVID-19 levels surrounding the upcoming holidays and flu season. 

It seems only now that the board has grasped the urgency of the situation. 

“We have over 1400 kids failing at least one course, over 1000 kids failing two courses, and 906 kids failing three courses,” said Dr. Rau. “Talk about inequity….This is a pandemic of student’s failures.”

The board ended up approving three different motions to provide onsite instruction as recommended by the administration beginning January 25 and approve the START plan, as specified for high school, Pre-K, and Elementary School and Middle School. 

These motions were separated due to the fact that the high school, in the words of McCaskey East teacher Matthew Coonan, is “its own beast, its own monster”. Because of the sheer size of McCaskey, students who choose to attend school in person will return in separate cohorts, one group at school on Monday and Tuesday, and the other group at school Thursday and Friday. 

Students will also be phased in, starting with freshmen and seniors on January 25, and sophomores and juniors on February 8. This is in contrast to district Middle and Elementary schools, whose in-person students will be attending school for five full days each week, depending on the number of students who sign up for in-person learning. Fully virtual students will zoom into live classes, and Pre-K students will attend school on an AM/PM schedule, half in the morning and half in the afternoon. 

All three motions were passed unanimously, with one exception: Dr. David Parry, who voted against the return to in-person instruction for High School students. “I continue to be concerned about this hybrid plan,” he said. “This is nothing about me trusting or not trusting high schoolers, it’s about balancing epidemiology risk vs learning risk. At the high school level, the epidemiology risk increases, given the nature of people in the building.”

All McCaskey teachers have now moved to virtual instruction from their classrooms in JP and East, and next week, Freshmen and Seniors will get their first look at what it means to be in-person students at McCaskey High School during a global pandemic.