Lamar County teachers will get more planning and face-to-face instruction time on Wednesdays beginning Oct. 21 in grades 6-12 after the School Board approved changing the upcoming schedule during a special meeting Wednesday afternoon.
Superintendent Dr. Steven Hampton said helping the teachers is crucial.
“We've looked at failure reports, and what we're seeing is that we have a high number of failures in our virtual students,” he said. “We have a high number of failures in our traditional students too. When talking with our building principals and teachers, our teachers are stretched so thin. They are trying to do both, and you can't adequately plan or prepare and instruct both.”
Hampton said planning periods are not always available. So, they give up their planning periods during the day, their designated planning periods, or they are covering classes.
“To be able to monitor our students and adequately supervise our students also, this time would be a dedicated time to where they can actually have some face-to-face times,” he said. “We've had several complaints about our virtual students not having access to our teachers as much as they'd like. We would have specific times where our teachers would meet face to face with their virtual students during that day, and also give them time to prepare plans and prepare to meet the needs of both sets of students.”
In the schedule changes, a fall/weather day on Oct. 13 was changed to a professional development day. Hampton said the results of the schedule change in the second nine-week period will be evaluated in late December.
On returning to school after Christmas Break, Jan. 4-6 are professional development days, and students will remain at home Jan. 7 and 8 for distance learning.
Hampton also received approval by the School Board to allow students to use the schools’ playground equipment by following the guidelines for cleaning and sanitation.
“We will also be limiting numbers of students to have access that we have in place now,” he said. “Our students are participating in recess. With our elementary school students, we've done a phenomenal job of providing individual playground spaces and not congregating, along with hand sanitizing, cleaning, and masks.”
Hampton said the school district is looking into the feasibility of cleaning the playground equipment between recesses.