Toledo Public Schools administrators are considering reopening registration for the district’s virtual academy following a recent announcement of the district’s plans to return to in-person instruction next month.
District officials rolled out a plan last week to reopen school doors as students would be able to return to in-person instruction by way of a hybrid model — partly in-person and partly online.
TPS Superintendent Romules Durant detailed the plans in which all students in preschool through second grade will return to in-person instruction on Oct. 12 and students in grades 3 through 12 on Oct. 26.
Following the announcement, district spokesman Candice Harrison, said no opt-out would be available for families who don’t want their children going back to school buildings, given that before school started they could have enrolled their children in the TPS Virtual Academy.
But on Thursday Jim Gault, the district’s executive transformational leader of curriculum, said TPS is reconsidering that stance and discussing the possibility of reopening academy enrollment at the Oct. 23 end of its first quarter.
District enrollment has increased since the August deadline, and staff have been contacting families to gauge interest in student transfers, Mr. Gault said.
“Now that we have a scheduled date to come back and almost a quarter of virtual learning under our belt, we’re having our educators and principals talk to our parents to gauge the numbers of families that would be interested in either opting out of virtual and return to physically attending, or enroll in virtual learning,” he said.
But any substantial change in where students are enrolled will affect how the various classrooms are staffed, and that will need to be ironed out in a timely manner, Mr. Gault said.
“We’re exploring the possibility, but we have to really look at our numbers as this would affect staffing,” he said. “We’ve already staffed our Virtual Academy and our brick-and-mortar schools, so any changes to those will affect our staffing level.
Any family interested in changing how its students are enrolled should notify their current school’s staff about their interest because there is no mechanism on the TPS website to do that, Mr. Gault added.
First Published September 25, 2020, 1:02 a.m.
