WASHINGTON – Mayor Muriel Bowser announced that public school students in Washington, D.C. will attend classes online through at least November 6.
The announcement came after weeks of delays due to the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the capital.
For weeks, local teachers and the Washington Teachers Union demonstrated to convince officials that in-person instruction is too risky and ask to return to school via virtual instruction. First-grade teacher Margaret Toot at Excel Academy is one of the teachers who is happy about the announcement.
When Mayor Bowser announced schools would shut down March 13, Toot and other teachers had very little time to prepare. For some of her students, the closure was very difficult to process.
“It was a really tough decision to make because school is one of the safest, if not the only safe place that they have. So it was really hard to tell those kids that because it hit them really hard.” Toot said.
Last spring, Toot faced many challenges when trying to teach her students. She says households with multiple students sometimes had to try to figure out how to share a single computer for classes at the same time. Other students didn’t have even devices to log in to classes. Toot says some days she was more concerned that her students had food and shelter before she could start teaching them.
Officials also announced plans to distribute up to 16,000 devices and 10,000 hotspots and set up free meal sites to help alleviate some of these issues.
Now that schools and teachers have time to plan for a virtual return, Toot thinks her students will be excited to log on and will receive quality instruction.
“Kids crave routine and ritual so like it’s gonna be great for everyone just to get back to like semi normalcy even if it might be stressful at the jump,” Toot said.
Toot urges parents to be patient and work with teachers to ensure students are successful in the first term.
D.C. schools reopen on August 31.
