DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — Teachers in DeKalb County are heading back into classrooms this morning, amid some objections by teachers to the district's return plan.
In DeKalb, teachers are going back first on Wednesday, in a phased-in return plan that originally called for them to be teaching virtually from on-site classrooms by mid-January.
Instead, that was pushed back.
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Students are not expected to be back in the classroom for another couple of weeks. The district has left open the possibility that their return could be further delayed, as they work with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to monitor COVID-19 cases throughout the county.
However, the hope is to have them back sooner rather than later.
"Our intention is not to keep our children out of the building any longer than they have to," Superintendent Cheryl Watson-Harris told 11Alive's Paola Suro last month.
Since the announcement that teachers would return, educators have protested the plan, arguing safety measures won't be adequate.
"The DeKalb County School District has not taken, in good faith, reasonable safety measures nor implemented an adequate protocol to protect employees and students," a release from the Organization of DeKalb Educators said last week.
Under the district's policy of letting families choose whether they want their students at school or to continue virtual learning, so far a majority have chosen to stay at home, according to the superintendent.
The district, with 94,000 students, sent out a survey to families earlier in the school year, which Watson-Harris said revealed that 40% of them would choose to return to in-person learning.
When making the decision to push back the timeline, she says the district checked back in with parents, and that number now sits closer to 30%.
"The number of families that would choose to return to face-to-face option are the minority but still very important and we want to continue to provide that option," she said. "We have made announcements to families that they'll have a chance to change their minds. After the doors are open, they may decide that they'd like a face-to-face option for their children and we will most certainly work with every family."
Dr. Sally Goza, of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said the goal for the group is to get back to in-person learning. She said face-to-face instruction plays a critical part in boosting academic performance, building social skills, providing stability and offering dependability in diet and exercise.
Goza would not recommend whether a school district should hold in-person learning. However, she said it depended on community spread.
"The incidents in schools mirrors the community spread, but it doesn't aggravate or lead the community spread," Goza said. "It mirrors what's happening in the community, and that's what is so important. We have to look at, how do we get the community spread down?"