Parent group pushes for in-person after hybrid half year

As COVID-19 averages over 1,000 new cases a day in Colorado, St. Vrain Valley School District (SVVSD) has provided hybrid modes of instruction during the school week — but a local parents’ group continues to push for the full five days to return.

St. Vrain’s Educational Advocates was formed in August 2020 as a Facebook group by parents of students in five Denver metro area school districts, including SVVSD.

Organization founder and local parent Dan Maloit believes there are concrete strategies the district can adopt to safely resume in-school learning.

“Our goal is to always make sure there’s an option available to be in person five days a week,” he said, alluding to the group’s primary goal of prioritizing student learning in the wake of Zoom class sessions for many of the district’s 30,630 students.

Though the district started the 2020-2021 school year fully remote, it is now conducting a hybrid model. District elementary schools are open four days a week, with middle and high schools doing a hybrid method of two days in person and two days of online. Schools are only in operation between Monday and Thursday.

Though that leaves only Fridays as an independent study day for students, Maloit thinks SVVSD’s response to the pandemic has been flawed due to the schedule, which he says fails to prioritize student engagement and puts an overwhelming load on teachers.

“Teachers are being overburdened. They have different lesson plans for in-person and online, so they end up doing twice the amount of work,” he said.

“Kids often get the same lesson twice,” he added, referencing the fact that students on hybrid plans may be subject to the irregular lesson plans created by their instructors. “No matter how you shake it out, they’re only getting three days a week of learning a week.”

Despite the school’s prioritization of transmission reduction by mitigating the amount of students going in and out of doors of the district’s 57 schools every day, Maloit thinks that students would be better served with continuous in-person learning at all levels. Aside from logistical conflicts, St. Vrain’s Educational Advocates believes there are negative repercussions to mental health at work.

“When our kids are in school, there’s a decreased risk of suicide and depression. There’s better opportunities to feel like they’re in a safe space, particularly when they don’t have that at home,” Maloit said. “It’s a disservice not to give them that opportunity.”

Maloit has advocated for a return to in-person learning simply for the sake of normalcy. When children aren’t in classroom environments, he said, they lose a degree of engagement, which he thinks will have long term consequences following the pandemic.

“When they’re at home, they’re in tears more often than not, I’ve seen it in my own kids,” Maloit said. “There’s distractions due to (Zoom) issues or pads. The disengagement we’ve been fretting about is now coming home.”

While schools have embraced a hybrid model for nearly 11 months now, administrators are hoping that strategy pays off, with COVID-19 cases declining in recent weeks.

As of Friday, Feb. 5, there were 12 active cases of COVID-19 in district students. Since the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year, there have been 529 total positive cases in students, which makes for a total of 1.68% of the district’s student body being afflicted by COVID-19.

“The more time they’re in school, the safer they are in school communities. And that’s because they’re following mitigation methods,” Maloit said. His organization has been following the current CDC and Boulder County Public Health guidelines in contact with Dr. Todd Porter, a pediatrician at Denver Health. Currently, studies have shown that children are at low risk of carrying the virus if they practice hand washing, social distancing, and mask-wearing while in the classroom.

As for protecting faculty?

The school district has vaccinated those in Colorado’s Phase 1B, which includes 630 SVVSD health workers and employees over 70. The district plans to roll out vaccinations for the other full-time K-12 workers in the coming months, who constitute Phase 1B.2. If all goes according to plan, according to SVVSD superintendent Don Haddad, in-person learning will be full-time in-person starting after March 26, the end of spring break.

Despite the goals set by the district, advocates such as Maloit are still dissatisfied, fearful that even two more months will present too much for students to lose in terms of their education.

“There are fully online options, so there should be fully in-person, too. It’s clear now that science supports that it’s just as safe.”