Statement from Colonial Families for Hybrid Learning

MoreThanTheCurve.com received the below statement today from a group that is calling itself the Colonial Families for Hybrid Learning. The group is advocating for the return of at least partial in-school instruction as the Colonial School District reopened with a 100% virtual model. The group believes the district hasn’t adequately addressed obtaining the staff to operate a hybrid learning model.

Below is the statement:

A group of families in the Colonial School District (CSD) have banded together to create a Facebook Group named Colonial Families for Hybrid Learning. Their goal is to promote an open and honest dialogue between school administrators, the teachers, the teachers union, and the CSD families regarding what it would take to make a hybrid instruction model work.

With over 230 members, the group has been active in taking its issues to the district school board. Last week its founders had an audience with Dr. Christian, the district superintendent, to discuss the many questions posed by the members of the group. These responses were summarized and posted to the group page.

The group has now turned its focus toward the staffing gap. At their meeting with Dr. Christian, he acknowledged that 20-25% of the teachers would have been unavailable had the district stayed the course with its initial hybrid model, which involved having one subset of students in
the classrooms and another watching remotely on alternating days. He further acknowledged that without a staffing solution, even with improving health metrics the district could have the same staffing challenge a month from now.

Colonial families in favor of having their children back in the schools as soon as possible are frustrated by the seeming lack of a plan to address the potential staffing shortage. The CSD website has its link “Attention: Substitute Teachers and Instructional Assistants,” but when clicked through, there are no positions for Colonial listed. At the Colonial School Board meeting this past Thursday, all that was shared when the staffing issues were raised again was, “We’re working on it.” Colonial families deserve more transparency.