Schools are working to convince parents to choose in-person classes in fall

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Tue, 2021-07-06 13:07 — mike kraft

Schools use home visits, calls to convince parents to choose in-person classes in fall Superintendents are knocking on doors and schools have hired therapy animals as part of a persuasion campaign to encourage parents to come back for the fall. Hannah Natanson Washington Post

As the school year ends and summer approaches, the persuasion campaign to convince families to choose in-person learning this fall is on with a vengeance.

In Florida, the superintendent of the state’s largest district is knocking on doors to talk up the benefits of face-to-face instruction. In Topeka, Kansas, school officials are traveling around neighborhoods hosting mobile vaccination clinics, where they deliver shots alongside reminders about the effectiveness in-person schooling. In Virginia, a principal visited the homes of 50 of her remote learners to assuage their fears about in-person schooling next semester.

And in the San Antonio Independent School District, superintendent Pedro Martinez has for weeks sent out every available member of his staff, from social workers to central office personnel, to chat with the roughly 20 percent of families who indicated they’d like to remain virtual next school year. San Antonio will offer remote learning in the 2020-2021 school year — unlike some states and districts, which are ditching that option entirely — but Martinez is hoping he can convince most families to forgo it.

The all-out effort, which has stretched into evenings and weekends, is exhausting.

“My teachers are tired, there’s just no question about it,” Martinez said. He asked his staff to rest for the second half of June, so they could recuperate before the start of summer school in mid-July. Martinez views summer programming, targeted to students who’ve struggled most, as one of his best remaining chances to reel in reluctant families.

ALSO SEE: Virtual learning is the new fault line in education: It’s either on the way out or on the rise

School districts nationwide have promised they will offer five days a week of in-person learning next year, representing a long-awaited return to normalcy. They’ve spent months blocking out unconventional classroom spaces and developing detailed guidelines so students and teachers can reenter school buildings safely in the fall at full, pre-pandemic capacities.

Many districts also brought back large portions of their student bodies over the course of the semester. Nationally, the percentage of fourth-graders and eighth-graders learning online-only had fallen to about 25 percent by April, down from a high of roughly 50 percent in January, federal data show.

But resistance to in-person learning is hard to eradicate, school officials say, especially in low-income households and among families of color, who’ve been disproportionately devastated by the pandemic. For some, the death of a parent or sudden unemployment forced students to take jobs they can neither give up nor balance with a regular school schedule. In other households, parents fear for immunocompromised children or family members. And there is general, continuing fear of the virus, as vaccines remain unavailable for very young children.

“In previous decades, the doors open and you expect students to show up,” said Alberto M. Carvalho, superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools. “This is the opposite.”

The stakes, school leaders and education advocates say, could not be higher. It’s clear the pandemic slowed academic progress across the board and widened existing equity gaps in education. In-person learning is seen by most as the best way to start making up for some of these discrepancies. ...

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