Seattle Public Schools expected to announce plan for reopening school in the fall on Friday
SEATTLE - Seattle Public Schools is expected to be the first in Western Washington to announce how they envision schools to look in the fall. The announcement is expected to come out Friday evening.
The district has been surveying parents and notified the community earlier in June that they were weighing 3 different models.
Whatever they come up with will be of importance to people outside of Seattle and could influence other school districts.
On Friday, it was hard to tell through the silence at Seattle schools that it was the last day for students.
“Normally we have happy kids coming off the bus we have a little bit of a celebration,” parent Anita Mallant said.
Instead of hugs goodbye and planning out summer activities, Mallant is still trying to explain to her 12 year-old son on why life is so drastically different.
“Remote learning is so difficult for him,” Mallant said.
Especially since her son Nathan is a special education student.
For weeks now, Mallant has been anxiously waiting for SPS to announce their opening plans for the fall.
“I actually thought there was a final decision today,” Mallant said.
She and many others have that impression because of an email from SPS earlier this month that stated that they would have a ‘final decision.’
“It did look like that, I can see why anybody would think that but something we should have perhaps stressed from the get go whatever decision that is announced on the 19th is a framework. Then the real work begins to fill in the blanks and operationally get the framework ready to go,” SPS spokesperson Tim Robinson said.
The first model is to have Pre-K to fifth grade going to school full time while the older kids do a combination of in-person and remote learning.
The second model is for all students to do a combination of face to face learning and remote learning.
Then the last option is 100% online learning for example in case we have a surge in COVID-19 cases.
“I hope they do part time remote, part time in-classroom,” Mallant said.
The fact that we are even talking about these options is shocking to the Seattle mom.
“Something I would have never expected in my entire lifetime, in my child’s lifetime and it’s definitely going down in the history books as one of the most craziest day by day change,” Mallant said.