- Elementary students doing remote learning will be placed in regional classes.
- The change will go into effect on Jan. 26 and affect an unknown number of students.
- It's meant to reduce in-person class sizes, but leaders worry there have been too many changes.
An unknown number of elementary students will be affected by another change in the way the Volusia County school district conducts the business of educating students during a pandemic.
Rather than having teachers at each of the district's elementary schools offering remote classes, the district will create a handful of regional remote classes for 1,250 of its youngest students who chose that option.
More:'Set in Jell-O:' Change the only constant in Florida schools during the coronavirus pandemic
The goal is to reduce too-big in-person class sizes and increase too-small remote class sizes. The downside is that it means yet another change for students and teachers who've experienced educational whiplash as a side effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. As state testing looms, district leaders hope it will be the last major change of the year.
Remote regional classes will solve problems, district says
Currently, teachers at some schools are teaching multiple grade levels of remote students (those who chose Volusia Live). There are some teachers who only have a few students. So aschool may have multiple in-person kindergarten classes with more than 20 students, and one remote kindergarten class with six students.
To fix that, the district is creating regional remote classes. For the 147 kindergarteners who are doing remote learning districtwide, for example, there will now be eight remote teachers at schools around the district teaching them all, instead of one dedicated person in each of the more than 40elementary schools.
More details:Watch the district's presentation
The move will reduce the number of general education teachers with classes of multiple grades of students from 35 to two, and will allow for a slight redistributing of some in-person students in order to reduce large class sizes. It will also reduce the number of teachers who are teaching remote and in-person students at the same time.
The drawbacks are that an unknown number of students will experience changes in teachers or classes, and they will possibly not be hosted at their zoned school anymore.
“The regionalization solves more problems than it creates,” said Director of Human Resources Rachel Hazel, who has been overseeing the project. “It is not without its drawbacks, but the advantages to student learning in this case far outweigh the negative.”
The changes won’t go into effect until the second semester begins on Jan. 26.
Unknown number of Volusia students to be affected by change
At last count, about 43,500 students are learning in person, and 8,100 are learning remotely. Of those remote students, about 1,250 elementary students will be moved to regional sites.
Another 5,900 students are enrolled in Volusia Online Learning, the online school that experienced a massive enrollment hike this year. But there’s also the potential for 800 students who are not making adequate academic progress in Volusia Online Learning to return to in-person or remote learning when the second semester starts. Staff also expects that the regionalization will encourage more remote students to switch back to in-person learning instead.
More:Volusia school district: Families can't switch learning options after Friday
More:Volusia students continue to fail remote classes, more return to in-person learning
One of the biggest challenges of the pandemic has been for district staff to get a handle on whichlearning option students are choosing, as families have continued to change their minds for most of the year. When school started, there were 16,000 students learning remotely — a number that has since been cut in half. To keep up with where students are, the district must make staffing changes.
In the fall, the district implemented a massive schedule change for middle- and high-school students, in an effort to reduce the number of classes with a mixture of in-person and remote students. Hazel said this change will not be as widespread, but did not have an exact number of students who would be affected because of how difficult it is to pin students down this year.
"I'm a parent too, and I understand that it doesn't matter what the numbers are," she said. "When it’s your child it becomes your reality."
Board members worry about impact on student performance
District staff presented the regionalization plan to the School Board on Tuesday, and as has been the case for most of the year, board members raised concerns about frequent changes to students’ learning environments.
“We are doing these kids a lot of harm with all of these changes,” Ruben Colon said.
More:Volusia School Board to interim superintendent: Fix remote learning
With the spring semester comes the return of state standardized testing, which can impact school grades and teacher evaluations. Testing was suspended last year during the coronavirus pandemic, but state leaders have indicated that will not be happening this year.
Jamie Haynes echoed some of Colon's concerns, but focused on families making voluntary changes: “I don’t believe there’s a parent out there that doesn’t care about a child’s education … We need parents to understand that with constant movement, your children are going to have gaps and lulls.”
Hazel said the goal would be for this to be the last change.
“At the beginning of this school year we thought we were writing a plan that would take us through winter break. Winter break is over and COVID is not over,” Hazel told The News-Journal. “Every time we extend our plans we are making changes to them, hopefully for the better.”
