By Ella Borcherding
Starting the school year was hard for everyone, especially the teachers and staff. According to FHS Principal Toby Pearce, lots of decisions went into coming back to school.
FHS had a back-to-school plan to keep the students and staff safe. High school teachers met in a zoom meeting at least two times each month during the summer with Mr. Pearce, and they made a safe plan for students to come back to school.
“We tried to learn from what didn’t work so well last spring,” Pearce said.
Dr. Hackney met with the principals to make a district-wide plan, which then led to the school board to decide to do hybrid so students could either go remote or go to school.
A part of the back-to-school plan was figuring out a way to get students in and out of the building safely. A safe way they decided to do it was only having four classes a day. Mr. Pearce said, “ it would be a lot less stressful this way.”
Lots of students really enjoy A and B days, but Mr. Pearce thinks that going back to a normal school day could possibly happen by the end of 2nd semester. However, that all depends on how fast the new vaccine is distributed.
His biggest concern was students wearing masks, but he was less worried when they decided to have an option between in-person learning or remote learning.
Many people throughout the country didn’t know how long students would be doing in-person learning. Mr. Pearce said,” I didn’t know if they were going to shut us down possibly after the first case, but I definitely didn’t think we were going to make it to November.”
Remote learning was definitely intimidating to not only students but their parents and teachers. FHS principal said,” If we had to do the back-to-school plan again we would put together more videos for remote learners to better prepare them for what they were going to be seeing.”
Nothing about this school year is normal. Sports games were put on hold or delayed by Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, dances are not even being thought of, and traditions for seniors are not happening because of the virus.
“I hate how Covid-19 has affected everyone, especially as a principal. I have seen students last spring miss a regular graduation and sports season and have seen it this year in students who need in-person learning,” he said.