The Christian County School System is planning ahead for the future of in-person learning and discussing what work needs to be done to improve education in the present.
Superintendent Chris Bentzel made no recommendation to the school board Thursday about bringing middle school students back to traditional, five days a week in-person learning. He says with the recent rise in COVID-19 cases both in the district and locally, now felt like the wrong time.
He says they’ll reassess in the next couple of weeks and see if the environment is better suited to that recommendation at that time. The school system recently transitioned Millbrooke to fully virtual learning until at least Monday, and temporarily stopped all extracurricular activities in the district.
Director of Instruction Jessica Addison gave a presentation about how students are faring in learning after a shortened school year last year and now a both shortened and very changed school year due to COVID-19. Following recent assessments, elementary and middle school students were behind in reading and especially math, according to Addison.
She says the assessment was administered at the end of September, and also shows that high school students are lagging behind as well in those same areas. She says they will move ahead with aggressive instruction and growth plans to get students back to where they need to be educational and fill-in the gaps in instruction they may have missed.
All schools are creating improvement plans on how to move forward, and will receive visits from administrators to help guide them through training in an effort to get students back on track.