With Clovis Unified School District exploring a possible return to in-person instruction, a parent survey revealed that a mid-January elementary school reopening is preferable.
A district official reported the results at the board meeting Wednesday evening, saying that 46.6% of parents want to return Nov. 3 while 53.4% of parents would prefer to return on Jan. 19.
Whenever CUSD makes the return to in-person instruction, it will not be in a full-time capacity, but instead will utilize a hybrid model in order to accommodate physical distancing requirements that the county and state health departments are mandating.
“The bottom line is that’s what we’re going to have to deal with and work with and want our parents to understand this social distancing, which will limit the amount of students we can have in a classroom, is not going to go away for a while,” said board president Chris Casado.
Given the option of returning to school or remaining online, 55.2% of parents want their kids to receive in-person instruction through the hybrid model while 44.8% of parents want their children to remain in the Clovis Connect online education system.
Over on the side of the educators, 53% of elementary school teachers want to return with a hybrid model while 40% wish to remain in the online platform.
The teachers also prefer to return in January with 76% backing that proposal and only 24% backing the November return.
A district official said the plan – which has changed and has the potential to change as the situation evolves – is to target an official Jan. 19 reopening date while slowly bringing students back to campus before then.