Harford County Students To Learn Virtually For First Semester

BEL AIR, MD — Students in Harford County will be taught through a virtual model of learning for the first two quarters of the upcoming school year, school officials announced in an online letter to district parents on Thursday.

In the letter, Superintendent Sean Bulson made the announcement, which also included the fact that a limited number of students will have access to school facilities during the first semester, when they will be provided internet access and supervision by district employees.

“There is general agreement that safe, in-person learning would be the first preference, but the current conditions make it impossible for large groups of students to be in school at one time,” Bulson wrote in the letter.

On Wednesday, school officials postponed an online Town Hall meeting in which school officials were to discuss its reopening plan. But the district announced that meeting had been pushed back to Thursday to allow the district to made revisions to the plan and said the revised plan would be available Thursday morning.

Before Thursday’s announcement, the district was considering three options for learning. The first involved a completely in-person model of teaching, a second made provisions for distant learning to take place while giving parents the option to send their students to school and the third was a hybrid model where students would attend school for a portion of each week and learn remotely the rest of the week.

In his letter Thursday, Bulson said after getting feedback from various groups since a Board of Education meeting, school officials determined that the hybrid model presents an “insurmountable logistical challenge” for parents in many cases. He said in the feedback, parents fell into two distinct groups: Those that favored in-person learning completely and those that favored students to learn remotely on a full-time basis.

Bulson announced Thursday that the entire first semester will rely on remote learning but that the district will provide a safe, supervised place for students during the school day. While attending the HCPS Learning Support Centers, Bulson wrote, students will receive virtual instruction from their teacher working from a remote location. These students will have access to bus transportation and Food and Nutrition services.

Bulson also said that the town hall meeting that is scheduled for Thursday evening beginning at 5:30 p.m. will still take place.

“Our ultimate goal is for every student to return to in-person learning as soon as safety allows. We have been fortunate that Harford County has experienced the lowest infection rate among the large counties in Maryland,” Bulson wrote. “Our county leadership has done an excellent job balancing safety considerations with efforts to incrementally return the community to more “normal” activities. We believe this plan is consistent with that approach and we will continue seeking ways to incrementally provide additional in-person experiences, particularly for our students with the greatest learning needs.”