DUVAL COUNTY, Fla. — School for students in Duval County starts Aug. 20 and First Coast News has you covered with what to know before your child hits the books.
Duval County Public Schools' plan includes in-school options, distance learning through Duval HomeRoom, and fully virtual learning through the Duval Virtual Instruction Academy.
School Board Chairman Warren Jones told First Coast News he was considering a resolution asking the state to approve 100% virtual teaching for the first nine weeks, but now Jones says he can't do that because the resources are not there.
Just over 20% of Duval students are enrolled in Duval HomeRoom so far, and if you're interested, you only have until Friday to register. That still leaves close to 90,000 students returning to classrooms.
Masks are required on the bus and in school, but not in recess nor classes like P.E. or band. Pre-K through second-graders and students with medical conditions will be issued face shields.
Students will have their temperatures checked when they enter school and use hand sanitizer when they enter the classroom. Elementary classrooms with sinks in them will be utilized the same way.
Desks for third through fifth graders will have clear barriers. Frequently touched surfaces like door handles will be sanitized throughout the day, but the district's protocol only calls for desks and desk barriers to be sanitized nightly.
How to get kids to school was a big dilemma for the district. With social distancing, the superintendent said it would take 10 hours to deliver students.
The district states that social distancing is not possible on buses. Now you must register your child to ride a bus. Sonya Duke-Bolden in public relations says this will show them how many buses they need and will help with contact tracing if there's a positive coronavirus case.
To teachers, the answer is obvious on how to stop even one positive case. They are demanding online learning for all until there are two weeks of no new cases.
"I took the CDC mortality numbers and I took our demographic data from our kids," explained Alex Ingram, a teacher and protest organizer. "Based on that demographic data seven of my students will die, like in the building."
If a student tests positive for the coronavirus at your school you may not know unless someone with the health department decides you need to. The district states there will not be general announcements about positive cases at schools.
If a student must quarantine, they can switch to Duval HomeRoom during that time. The lack of a more clearly defined protocol on what to do about positive cases in classrooms leads teachers back to their main fight.
"That's why we should be online," Ingram said. "There are all these impossible questions to answer and there's so many of them that it's so easily solved by saying, 'okay for the first quarter at least, we're going full online.'"
Something talked about less is the fact that sometimes kids don't like to do what they're told. Some adults don't even wear masks. Ingram asks: what about enforcing any of the rules?
"I should be able to say, 'okay well no mask, you're putting my students at harm. You can't be in my classroom,'" he said.
Duke-Bolden says the district has 2400 substitute teachers and that the list is growing.
Read about the DCPS reopening plan on their website here.