ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — The Rochester Central School District is now planning to practice fully remote learning for the first ten weeks of the upcoming school year. This includes students in grades K-12.
The Rochester Teacher’s Association called for a delay to in-person instruction for the first 10 weeks of school, and RCSD agreed to the request on certain conditions.
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In an email from RTA President Adam Urbanski, the agreement outlined the changes to be made in order to ensure the quality of education of all students through remote learning.
This includes RTA surveys that focus on individual teachers’ technology and remote learning readiness, rescheduling superintendent conference days to Sept. 9-11 in order to focus on remote-learning instruction and environment, virtual office hours and more.
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You can read the full agreement here:
RTARCSD MOU on Reopening of Schools by News 8 WROCon Scribd
Both RTA President Urbanski and RCSD Superintendent Dr. Lesli Myers-Small signed the agreement Wednesday.
Just last week, RCSD planned on a using a hybrid-learning model.
In an interview with News 8, Urbanski attributed the change to Dr. Myers-Small’s open mind.
“What has changed is that the superintendent of the Rochester Central School District proved that she has an open mind to doing the right thing by our students,” said Urbanski. “And so after hearing the collective wisdom of teachers and parents, she determined that the best way to educate our children, at least for the inital ten weeks of the next school year is to do it all virtually. And we fully agree, and we respect her for her decision and for her leadership, and we are determined to provide a good education for all our students while also keeping them safe, the educators safe, and also the families of our students and our educators safe.”
RCSD release a statement on their website on Thursday. It read in part:
“While this is not an easy decision to make, we have decided that all Rochester students will begin the school year in September under a remote learning model and not the hybrid model we originally proposed. We carefully considered the Governor’s expectations around testing and contact tracing, particularly the additional planning with the Health Department that will be needed, and the input we received from the Rochester community and the experiences of other urban districts around the country. “
You can read the full statement here.
District representatives also say there will be a press conference held Friday morning.
This is a developing story, News 8 will provide updates as they become available.