In September, Buffalo Public Schools students will be given the option of starting the school year fully remote, Superintendent Kriner Cash said Thursday.
All students will be invited back to in-person classes five days a week, but he anticipates that about one-fourth of the district’s 31,000 students might choose to start the year remotely.
Each district has until July 1 to post online its plans for the stimulus money. Schools have until September 2024 to spend it.
“What we’re finding is that this pandemic has been very traumatic for a lot of people,” Cash said. “Pandemic worry is still out there. There’s school phobia and social and emotional challenges from students who have come back to school and are finding they’re not really happy to be back.”
The schools will work with students to help them transition back to attending school in person five days a week by the end of the first quarter, six weeks into the school year, he said.
People are also reading…
“Kids need to get back into the mode of going to school again,” Cash said.
Buffalo joins a growing number of districts across the country that have recently announced plans to reopen in person five days a week in the fall. It was the last in New York State to bring any students back into the classroom during the current school year.
As early as next week, middle school and high school students will be given the option to return to school in person four or five days a week in many suburban districts in Erie County.
National health experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci and CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, have said they believe it will be safe for students to return to their classrooms in person in September.
And teachers unions, many of which had opposed resuming in-person instruction throughout much of this school year, are increasingly voicing support. Randi Weingarten, president of the second-largest teachers union in the country, unequivocally called last week for schools to reopen in person five days a week this fall.
“Educators want to be in the classroom with their students full time,” New York State United Teachers President Andy Pallotta said. “We support offering full-time in-person instruction five days a week in the safest possible manner.”
Buffalo school officials will be meeting June 4 to work through the logistics for next year. Cash plans to send letters to families the week of June 7 to provide details of the district’s plans for 2021-22.
Cash had hoped to offer all students in pre-kindergarten through second grade the option to finish the current school year in person five days a week, he said, but he learned from administrators Thursday that the logistical challenges were too great.
The schools allege in court papers that the Buffalo School Board disregarded a number of state laws and regulations in the months leading up to voting to close the schools.
“What we’re running into is challenges with classroom space given even four to five feet of social distancing, issues with lunchroom schedules, transportation challenges and then staffing,” he said.
He emphasized the need for students to get vaccinated.
“In the last several weeks, students are the main ones testing positive, and we have to bring that number down,” he said.
Although the infection rate in Erie County as a whole has fallen below 100 cases per 100,000 people, there remain ZIP codes in Buffalo well above that level, Cash said.
