Published in the August 10, 2020 edition.

WAKEFIELD — Changes come quickly during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in the ever-important field of education.

On Wednesday, the School Committee is scheduled to finalize the district’s return to instruction plans, and over the weekend administrators accepted feedback from elementary school families on what that return should look like.

Last Thursday, Supt. of Schools Doug Lyons and Asst. Supt. Kara Mauro asked grade school families to participate in a survey that included questions regarding their preference for a hybrid schedule and also a question to inform educational leaders of family intentions to participate exclusively in remote learning.

In a memo, Lyons and Mauro wrote:

“We want to thank you for your outreach over the past couple of days. In addition to email feedback, we appreciated the 300 families who were able to join us on a Zoom call last night. We apologize to those families who were unable to access the call due to maximum capacity. We are working on this with our IT department and trying to expand participation for upcoming forums….

“On Tuesday night, elementary principal representatives, Tiffany Back and Matt Carter, presented a concept of an elementary hybrid schedule as part of our overall district recommendation to move forward with a hybrid model at each level. The schedule that was presented was based on the work of the reopening teams and reflects elementary priorities of safety, consistency of routines and as much in person learning as possible.

“The schedule was built on the concept that classrooms would be split in half to create two cohorts. One cohort would attend in person learning in the morning for a half day and the other cohort would attend in the afternoon. When students are not participating in in person instruction, they would be assigned extension activities or other asynchronous learning opportunities such as Lexia or ST Math. The goal with this type of remote instruction is to limit the need for substantial parent support when students are not participating in in person learning. This would occur Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Wednesdays would be a remote learning day for all. This is hybrid option A.

“We received a lot of feedback with concerns from parents that a half day model, despite the instructional strengths, would cause logistical stress for families. Our reopening teams continued their work to create an alternative schedule that maintains our priorities of safety, consistency of routines and as much in person learning as possible. An alternative hybrid schedule is to continue to split classes into cohorts, but these cohorts would run on a Monday/Tuesday and a Thursday/Friday split. On these days, students would attend a four hour instructional block and be dismissed with a grab and go lunch option to avoid cafeteria gathering. On these days, there would be synchronous (live in person learning with teachers) and asynchronous (learning that does not involve live instruction) remote learning opportunities in the afternoon (ex. Specials, check-ins with teachers, etc.). Every other Wednesday, cohorts would alternate for in person learning on the four hour schedule. When there is a Monday holiday, students in the Monday/Tuesday cohort would be prioritized for in person learning on Wednesday. On the days when cohorts are not in school for in person learning, students would engage in a combination of synchronous learning and asynchronous learning opportunities. This is hybrid option B.”

There was a link to the survey in the memo emailed to elementary school parents.