Tuscaloosa City Schools Moving To All-Virtual For Final Week

TUSCALOOSA, AL.— Tuscaloosa City Schools (TCS) announced during a special called school board meeting Thursday that the district will shift to a virtual-only learning format the last week of the semester as coronavirus cases rise within the school system and the community.

TCS Superintendent Mike Daria said the meeting was called ahead of Tuesday's regular meeting due to the urgent nature of the rise in local cases and hospitalizations. He said the district saw a spike in COVID-19 responses this week following Thanksgiving, with 35 students testing positive and 15 employees, resulting in 520 students and 69 employees isolated or quarantined.

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"This is up from the week before Thanksgiving," he pointed out.

Some of the more worrisome numbers, Daria said, could be seen in the recent trends, reporting that TCS had quarantined a total of 1,164 students before Thanksgiving. Since Nov. 20, Daria said a total of 423 students had been isolated.

Similarly, he said the district had logged 85 student positives before Thanksgiving, with 35 coming just since Nov. 20. Some schools have been hit particularly hard, including 45% of students having to quarantine at Eastwood Middle School, along with 31% at Westlawn Middle.

"In our initial thinking, to respond to what we’re seeing and address concerns among employees and cases we’re seeing, we considered going staggered or staying the course or virtual for the next two weeks," Daria explained of the initial discussions for the end of the semester, but said committing to virtual-only for the week of Dec. 14 would provide ample notification to parents and allow teachers time to prepare.

In an announcement released after the meeting, Daria acknowledged that the changes to the academic schedule will pose a challenge for many families.

“That’s why we want to provide families as much advanced notice as possible," he said. "I believe this decision allows us to plan and be more purposeful. We are working as a team to find the best path to make sure our students are safe and our staff are safe.”

TCS also said students not enrolled in full-time virtual learning for the entire year will return to school in January on a staggered schedule from Jan. 5-15, with students returning to four-day-a-week in-person instruction on Jan. 19.

Daria said Fridays will remain virtual-only to allow for deep cleaning of schools — a strategy the district believes has been highly effective in limiting institutional spreading of the virus.

"The virtual Fridays this board has supported have been extremely important for deep cleaning," he said.

The superintendent then spoke to staffing, calling the situation operational but fragile as it relates to the district's pool of substitutes.

"As of today we’re operational," Daria said. "We’re covered. In some case it means the staff inside the school are helping make that coverage happen, which certainly puts a burden on the staff and the school."

He also said Kelly Education Staffing, the employment service used by the school for substitutes, is working to fill vacancies, but is also feeling the impact of the virus as case numbers and close-contact exposures rise.

In other business, the school board approved a waiver of the district's requirement of semester exams for high school students for December 2020. The decision was made in favor of collecting data on each student for evidence of mastery of academic standards.

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