Chambersburg school board approves two-tiered reopening plan

Chambersburg Area School District will reopen for in-person instruction in October, the school board decided late Tuesday night. 

Students in kindergarten through fifth grade will return to schools on Oct. 19. One week later, students in grades six through 12 will go back on Oct. 26. 

Students will attend school on an AA/BB hybrid schedule. Those with last names starting with A-K will attend school on Mondays and Tuesdays and have remote instruction on Thursdays and Fridays. Students with last names L-Z will follow the opposite schedule, with remote instruction Monday and Tuesday and in-person instruction on Thursday and Friday. For students with different last names living in the same household, the schedule will follow the oldest student. Wednesday will be a support day with no scheduled classes, during which personnel can thoroughly clean schools. 

Special-education students and Level 1 ESL (English as a second language) students will be able to attend school every day but Wednesday as part of the approved model. 

Parents will still have the choices to keep their children in the current distance learning model or to enroll their students in Chambersburg Area Virtual Education, the district's full-time cyber schooling program. 

The board voted 7-2 on the reopening option after about four hours of discussion. Carl Barton, Sally Brooks, Thomas Dolan, Mark Schur, Kris Scritchfield, Kevin Mintz and Dana Baker voted for the motion, and Michael Finucane and Edward Norcross voted against it. 

Every person in a school will be required to wear a face covering, per a mandate from the Pennsylvania Department of Health. Superintendent Dion Betts said the administration will strictly enforce this, and addressed what would happen if a child would refuse to keep their face covering on. 

"We would call the parent and say pick up your child. They will not wear their mask and are putting other people in danger," he said. 

Chambersburg's public schools have been closed since mid-March following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The current school year began Aug. 24 with full-time virtual instruction, a model that has been heavily criticized by many parents. 

Earlier in the meeting, the board voted down the administration's recommended option to bring all students back to schools Oct. 26 on an AA/BB schedule. Baker and Mintz cast the lone votes in approval. 

The administration presented four reopening options to the board, as the board had requested at a meeting last week. None of the options were to bring students back five days a week; the state Department of Health recommends that school districts in counties in the "moderate" category based on the area's transmission rate operate schools on a blended/hybrid model or fully virtual. 

The key argument among board members was over how soon students should be brought back. They also discussed how to address teachers' requests for more preparation time. 

Baker, the board president, noted that no decision on reopening will have 100% approval in the school community. 

 Parents protested for reopening

The AA/BB hybrid schedule will bring some relief to parents, but several main issues will remain: The learning management systems will remain a key component of class structures, and students will still be out of school buildings three days a week. 

A few dozen parents and other community members gathered in the parking lot of the district administration building in the hours before the board meeting to protest in support of reopening schools. A number of school board members and Superintendent Betts mingled among the participants. 

Rachel Hershey, who has a senior and a second-grader, said there that she thinks hybrid will be fine for secondary students but she prefers a five-day schedule for the younger ones. Her youngest child has struggled with keeping up with her classwork and dealing with the learning management system, which she has to log in and out of 14 times a day in order to attend all her classes. 

“There’s no reason why if I can go to work and work around thousands of people a day, these elementary school kids, the teachers can't sit in a room with 20 people," she said. 

Betsy Bender normally limits screen time for her third-grader and kindergartner and worries that the amount of time they have to spend on a computer now will hurt them in the long run. While her kids do think it's pretty cool that they can use a computer so much, her oldest child has been in tears with frustration. 

Bender said at the protest that she thinks a hybrid schedule is "OK," but she does not see how it could help anything given the two groups of students will be learning in the same spaces. She finds it "silly" that at least the elementary kids can't go full time. 

Amanda Foster said she has struggled seeing her special-education kindergartner fall back in his verbal skills. Being around kids at Head Start is what helped him find his voice in the first place, and now he is told to stay on mute almost all of the time in his virtual classes. 

Steve Freeman was among the few men at the protest. He got emotional discussing his son, who has not gotten off to the best start in his freshman year due to virtual schooling. Freeman is worried about how it could affect him going forward, especially since this is the first year that really counts toward college enrollment. 

Jason Forrester does not have any kids in the school district, but he decided to come out to the protest because he does not think the community's tax dollars are being used wisely. 

"The citizen always pays and again and again we never get a return on what we pay for and that just frustrates me to no end," he said. 

Amber South can be reached at asouth@gannett.com.