Parents and students alike are patiently waiting to find out what school will look like in August. And actually so are some superintendents.
However, Lima City Schools and Shawnee Local Schools are prepared, whatever the case. Guidance from the state has yet to come down. They both have plans whether teaching will be done in person, at home or a combination of both, called blended learning.
Of course there’s a lot to consider while making plans such as transportation, lunch time, even traveling the hallways.
"We’re doing some of it, but we’re not getting too far into the details yet," Jim Kanable said, superintendent of Shawnee Local Schools. "Just because we know from what we’ve seen between really April until now, things are going to change."
Lima City Schools is using it’s CARES Act money to provide every student a Chromebook for school.
"So really, what we’re going to—we’ll be doing blended learning anyway," Superintendent Jill Ackerman said, Lima City Schools. "Because we should be doing that. And so, we’ll be prepared even if we come back at 100 percent there could be the possibility of a rolling closure, things happen. So we would be completely prepared for online learning to happen."
Schools have already got a taste of online learning when the COVID-19 Pandemic hit Ohio in March. It was a learning experience for staff too.
"We did find out that, we’re capable and that’s very reassuring that there are other methods," Kanable said. "I don’t think we’re going to have another snow day in Shawnee School District. We’ll just go to an at home learning day, for that day."
Ackerman said they learned they need to focus on priority work rather piling on all the information at once. She also says communication has to be at it’s peak for it to work, which is why they are changing the district to families text alert.
"We’re going to move to what’s called school messenger, which will give us the ability to do individualized building calls, emails, text alerts as well as district wide," said Ackerman
Gov. Mike DeWine said he wants to provide broad safety guidelines for schools but leave it up to them on how to open their doors.
