In mid-September, the school board released a chart outlining the plan for Covid-19 related temporary school closures or individual quarantine during the 2021-2022 school year.

This plan details five different quarantine and closure situations: individual students, individual teachers, individual classes, individual schools, and for the school district as a whole. The entire document can be found here on the VBCPS website. 

According to the chart, in the case of an individual school closure, the school will function on the same hours and schedules, but with synchronous, online learning. Students will have screen breaks throughout the day. Teachers will teach online from inside the school building. If the entire district closes, classes will function the same way as they would if closed individually, but with all students and staff learning and teaching from home. 

The information was directly issued to staff via email, but it has not being well publicized to students and their families. 

“I had no idea this was a thing,” said junior Mona Hosseini. “Teachers never talked about it, there was no announcement about it.”

Students have mixed feelings about the possibility of ever returning to a virtual learning model.

“I did not learn well under virtual learning at all,” said junior Aliyah Brown. “It felt as if I was just doing busywork the entire year. I most likely could not [learn well] if we were to do it again.”

Eleventh-grade English teacher Allison Schroyer is also hopeful that there won’t be a need to return to virtual. 

“I feel that true learning and teaching occurs in a classroom and with hands-on learning opportunities,” said Schroyer.  “Virtual learning, no matter how engaging you try to make it, can’t replicate this.”

Nevertheless, teachers must be prepared for any scenario. 

“I think it is important to start putting some things in place,” said Schroyer. “So if the need to go virtual arises again, both my students and myself will be prepared.”

If we’ve learned anything over the past two years it’s that we can’t predict what will happen, but must prepare the best we can for any turn our learning could take amid Covid-19 variants and new outbreaks. Keep in mind what you can do to keep yourself and others safe, and keep up with any new information posted on the VBCPS website.