Cummings: Students must lock into hybrid or full-time remote education

Grafton schools are asking parents to choose between hybrid instruction or full time-remote learning for the rest of the year.

Superintendent of Schools Jay Cummings, in a message to parents, said Monday that parents have until February 12 to commit to either model.

“Over the past five months, we have allowed some movement between those models,” Cummings said. “We have found that student movement from the Remote Learning Academy to the hybrid model results in tremendous challenges in maintaining staffing stability and consistently providing the required spacing within our classrooms.”

At the start of the school year, about 25 percent of the district’s students chose the Remote Learning Academy. The remainder alternate weeks between remote learning and in-classroom education, allowing social distancing during in-school time.

To date, none of the cases of COVID-19 in the school system have been linked to in-school transmission.

Last week, Cummings announced that both kindergarteners and first grade students will return to entirely to classrooms at both North and South Grafton elementary schools on February 8.

“We are asking parents to commit to a model. We cannot make this all work with people ping-ponging back and forth between models,” Cummings said. “That said, individual situations are definitely going to arise and we will handle each of those situations to the best of our ability.”

Parents who want to change their child’s current learning model will need to contact their building principal by February 12.