Cobb school superintendent Chris Ragsdale said Thursday a virtual learning option will be offered in the Cobb County School District for the 2021-22 school year.
He made the announcement at the Cobb Board of Education work session Thursday afternoon, and said revisions to the current remote and in-person options are being revised.
“That is emphatic and definite,” Ragsdale said of continuing a virtual option.
He said hopes to have the modifications finalized by the end of the current school year in May.
He did not elaborate on what those changes may entail, except to say that “we are learning from mistakes” and “seeing the impacts” a dual learning system has had on students and teachers.
“We recognize the extreme level of difficulty for all team members this school year,” Ragsdale said.
While students have had a choice of how to learn, teachers have been required to teach from their classrooms, and to teach their in-person and remote students simultaneously.
That has led to complaints from teachers for instructional and health reasons. Following the COVID-related deaths of three Cobb school teachers since Christmas, some have renewed calls to allow teachers with health issues to work from home.
Ragsdale didn’t specify those matters in his remarks at the school board work session.
More than two-thirds of Cobb’s more than 107,000 students opted for in-person learning for the spring semester, a higher figure than slightly more than 50 percent in the fall.
But while Ragsdale said he is hopeful that COVID “will be in the rear view mirror” someday, that time is not now.
“I don’t know if the virtual option is not here to stay,” he said. “Some students excel in that environment.”
Parents of Cobb school district students have until the end of February to change their child’s learning option for the rest of the current school year.
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My wife who teaches kindergarten in cobb county has 11 face to face and 7 virtual. Which ones do you think are considered excelling? Virtual of course, and why? Maybe because the parents are doing the work for the child. How do you explain a child excelling when all they do on camera is play around and do anything but pay attention. Then all of a sudden they are considered excelling! For the love of God, have a teacher in each grade specifically instruct the virtual kids. Trying to teach both is a joke. These teachers are beyond stretched thin!! Point blank period!!
If he can’t figure out how to get students in the classroom and keep them there, he needs to just resign now and let the board find someone competent to run the district.