Heather Bell
RADFORD – The first nine-week grading period is in the books for Radford City Public Schools, with report cards issued this week.
As the school division embarks on the second grading period of the year, school administrators are slowly adding additional students to in-person instruction. A recent survey of parents indicates a majority are comfortable with their children attending school in-person four days a week. Approximately 630 families responded.
“The survey offered much information for the division to consider regarding COVID capacity and occupancy,” said Superintendent Robert Graham in his newsletter recently distributed to the school community. “The survey asked if the cases of COVID-19 continue to decrease in the New River Valley and if mitigation strategies remain in place would families be comfortable sending their children four days a week for face to face instruction in the school building. Seventy-six percent answered yes.
The breakdown is as follows:
McHarg: 81 percent are comfortable with sending all children four days a week
Belle Heth: 76 percent are comfortable with sending all children four days a week
Dalton: 70 percent are comfortable with sending all children four days a week
RHS: 70 percent are comfortable with sending all children four days a week
“It is helpful that RCPS understand how the community feels about increasing the number of students attending face to face instruction in the school building,” said Graham. “As we begin the process of identifying students in need of accessing that instruction, the division is still cognizant of the distancing that must remain in place and the COVID occupancy numbers assigned to each learning environment. Therefore, RCPS will continue to increase the number of students entering each school based on a set of criteria as long as each learning environment can maintain the mitigation strategies (physical distancing, mask wearing, not exceeding the capacity limits). The division will re-evaluate its plan of increasing in person learning numbers at the beginning of the third quarter.”
“As we increase the number of students attending school in person, we must keep in mind how many people (including students and teachers) can be in a classroom and safely distance themselves. RCPS is dedicated to keeping all school community members safe and will therefore implement the following steps for the second quarter”:
Face coverings or masks will be required at all times. When students, teachers and staff are eating, they must physically distance themselves (at least six feet apart) so that they can take their masks off.
Students will remain in their choice of learning delivery (face to face learning through the hybrid program as a Rockin’ R or a Bobcat two days a week or remote learning through Virtual Radford five days a week) for the entire second quarter.
Virtual Radford students will not be approved to change to face to face instruction at
anytime during the second quarter.
Hybrid students (Rockin’ R/Bobcat) will not be approved to change to the Virtual
Radford learning platform unless a students has an illness, an exposure to COVID-19, or Radford City sees an increase in COVID-19 cases and the family chooses to go virtual.
RCPS will maintain classroom occupancies within the COVID-19 capacity as recommended by the CDC/World Health Organization/American Academy of Pediatrics.
