YORK COUNTY, Va. — Students on the Peninsula are getting more class time.
The York County School Division announced it’ll expand in-person learning days to four days, up from the current two.
The expansion will happen through a phased approach, with the first set of students beginning the new hybrid model on Monday, March 29.
Under the new hybrid model, students who opted for hybrid learning will attend school Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. On Wednesday, students will have an independent learning day.
The first set of students returning March 29 include students in grades PreK to grade 2, grade 6 and grades 9-12. Grades 3-5 and 7-8 will begin the four-day schedule on Monday, April 12, after Spring Break.
Gloucester County Public Schools are also expanding to four in-person learning days. On March 22, students with disabilities in grades 6-12 began four days of in-person learning. All remaining students will begin the four-day schedule on April 19.
During a school board meeting earlier this week, Dr. James Carroll, Chief Operations Officer of the York County School Division said the decision to expand in-person learning days comes after a data showed low COVID-19 transmission rates in their schools.
Additionally, he said the Centers for Disease Control’s new COVID-19 guidelines for schools will allow for more students in classrooms. Carroll said the biggest driver of the change came from the CDC’s new guideline allowing three to six feet of social distancing in classrooms.
School leaders say they’ll continue doing audits to check each school’s safety.
“We’ll be going and doing them at a quicker rate especially in these initial weeks so that we can make sure we have the mitigations that we should, have dialogues with the principals, suggest improvements,” Carroll explained.
The expansion of in-person learning days is a relief for Leslie Woolery, a parent living in York County. Woolery said her son has struggled with virtual learning.
“I fight with my own mental health sometimes and you can see it in my son’s face that he’s fighting with his, and it just hurts cause you don’t know how to help him,” Woolery remarked.
Woolery said she hopes more class time will help her son liven up.
“I feel like we can start to breathe again, you can get back out, you can try to have a life again instead of being shut down,” Woolery said.
While Woolery said she’s looking forward to more class time for her son, the increased number of students in each class is a bit of a concern.
“That got me kind of nervous, cause more kids, closer, germs, all that…but I’m feeling pretty confident for the most part,” Woolery said.
Parents in York County and Gloucester who chose to keep their kids virtual will still have that option.