It will be unlike any other school year in history, but students in Christian County Public Schools will log onto a laptop or other device for the first day of school Thursday.
Renikka Owen is the interim principal at Millbrooke Elementary School and says the first couple days of school will not include formal instruction.
About 2,300 students will be participating in the Virtual Learning Academy, while the remainder are beginning the year with non-traditional instruction. That poses problems for students who do not have access to a high-speed internet connection at home and the district has set up hot spots at each school building and every volunteer fire department out in the county.
Technology Coordinator Jason Wilson says students can download their coursework at a hot spot, take it home, complete the work and then return to the connection to upload the work.
Jessica Addison is the director of instruction and says there will be at least one person at each school until 8 p.m. on weekdays to answer questions during the evening and to help rectify issues with logging onto the systems.
Todd County opened the new school year with online instruction Wednesday and Trigg County begins virtually on August 31.