Du Quoin schools: 'All-remote' learners will be allowed to play sports, do activities

The Du Quoin school board will allow students who choose the all-remote learning plan for the first quarter to be able to play sports and participate in extracurricular activities, contrary to what the district's leadership team has recommended.

The school board met Tuesday in a lengthy session to go over all aspects of District 300's back to school plan. The first day of student attendance will be Aug. 17.

Most of the draft plan was approved informally by board members. The students who choose to attend school will be in class on Mondays/Wednesdays and Tuesdays/Thursdays, while the entire student body will have remote learning on Fridays.

But led by board member Crystal Harsy, board members objected to the suggestion that only children who choose the "blended" learning plan should be eligible for sports and activities. The exception offered in the initial plan is that children with health conditions that require them to learn remotely could be eligible for sports or activities that could be done safely.

Harsy, however, questioned why the district would "punish" families who chose all-remote learning to keep their children safe, by excluding them from sports and activities.

"It's up to the parents to decide what they feel is risky," she said.

Superintendent Matt Hickam said the district leadership team - about 15 administrators and principals - decided that activities and sports should be reserved for kids who attend school.

Hickam said, it wasn't his intent to be punitive but just to maintain consistency.

"Our mindset was having a clear line to mitigate the risk," he said. "Although I can see both sides."

Pam Pursell, a teacher and the Du Quoin Education Association co-president, said teachers wonder why a student who can go play sports can't come to the classroom in person.

"It makes us feel bad," she said. "Why can't you come to my classroom if you can go out on the football field?"

Other board members, however, said not every sport or activity involves a lot of contact between players - golf, for example, or academic clubs like engineering which can meet virtually.

"Parents can feel that their kids are still going to get educated, and that if they show up for golf practice in the afternoon they can still have that which is beneficial to them in many ways," Harsy added. "And ... fewer people in the building means not as much (virus) spread."

As of Thursday, 75 students have requested all-remote learning for the first quarter, out of about 1,400 students altogether. Fourteen of them are at the high school; 30 at middle school and 31 in the elementary school.

Meanwhile, the school day will run from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Thursday, Hickam said. The board discussed ending it at 1:30 p.m. but the decision has since been to push it back to 1 p.m. and forgo an in-school lunch period.

Instead, he said, students will walk out of school Monday-Thursday with bags containing two cold lunches - one for the current day and one for the next day, when they won't be in attendance.

All-remote students are also entitled to pick up lunches, he said. All parents will be asked if they intend to participate in the cold lunch program, and on which days, so the kitchen staff can prepare the right amount of food.

However, the meals are no longer free to students who are not on the free/reduced price lunch program. The federal government paid for the meals last spring and summer meals are always free to everyone in Du Quoin, he said, but now the feds have dropped out and it's back to normal.

Hickam said ending the day at 1 p.m. gives students five full hours of instruction.

Teachers, however, work through 3:20 p.m. each day, and so sports practices and extracurricular activities will not begin until the teachers have finished their work days. Hickam said teachers will use that nearly two hours for their own lunch break, to prepare remote lessons and do other course planning.

He said the big unknown so far is how many students will opt for all-remote learning. The deadline to sign up is Aug. 12.

How big a burden doing both in-school and remote lessons will be on teachers will depend on the numbers, he said. And he is concerned about that.

"The question is how can we make it palatable for them?" he said. "We can never make it easy, but we can try to make it palatable."

Pursell said teachers are concerned, too. "I have to figure out what I'm going to do for my kids who are there every day ... and then they switch, then it's Friday and I have to figure out what I'm going to do online with all of them," she said.

"Not to mention the remote kids - how and when am I going to contact them for all four of those different classes because I can't just say, 'Here's an assignment, do it,' because they're not going to get it," she added. "I take my job seriously and I want to do my best. And it's hard. It's, it's really hard."

<b>'Focus on remote learning'</b>

Harsy said that based on her conversation with doctors at the Perry County Health Department, "it's very likely that we're all going to end up in remote learning anyway."

"Even Major League Baseball has shown us that with all their millions of dollars they can't keep it from spreading," Harsy said. "So to me, the focus should be on a strong remote plan."

The benefit, she said, is to make parents comfortable that remote learning can still be academically strong, "and if we drop back into Phase 2, we can be ready for full remote learning when it goes there."

Hickam said the district has been working on that possibility since spring. He too, has been in frequent contact with the health department.

The school board will meet at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 13 where the board is expected to approve the re-drafted back to school plan.