Increase In Distance Learners Causes Staffing Concerns At School

STAMFORD, CT — Dolan Middle School has seen "significant increases" in students opting for distance teaching and learning since the start of the school year, and district officials hope adding some positions will help balance class sizes.

Michael Fernandes, associate superintendent for intervention and student support, said during the Board of Education's meeting Tuesday the number of students who have opted for distance learning at the school has increased from 80 to 180 over the past couple of months.

According to Fernandes, this increase has primarily affected English, science and physical education at the school. While the district's maximum class size is 30, some of the school's distance learning classes contain 32-34 students. (To sign up for Stamford breaking news alerts and more, click here.)

The district has addressed this increase over the past few months by making scheduling changes and collapsing some of its hybrid classes, among other solutions, Fernandes said.

"We're at a point now where those changes and those solutions just aren't possible," Fernandes said during the meeting.

In response, Fernandes presented a resolution to the board requesting an additional full-time position to teach English and two part-time positions to teach science and physical education be added to the school's distance learning academy.

Fernandes said these positions would "only be for this year" and be funded through the district's grants budget.

Board member Becky Hamman questioned whether more positions should be added at other Stamford schools.

"If we went from 80 to 180 at just Dolan, what is happening across the district with full-time distance learning?" Hamman said during the meeting. "What are the numbers, and are we going to have to be adding more positions on into other schools? This is just one of several."

Fernandes said the district was "seeing increases" in students opting for distance learning across all of its schools, however Dolan has been affected most significantly.

"There is still room in many of the distance teaching and learning classes at our other middle schools," Fernandes said. "We're actually working on a plan to address this for the mid-year semester point. There's more opportunity for schedule changes at that time, so we might be able to accommodate that...in January."

Hamman noted January was only a month away and asked if the district had made any projections to determine if they will need more staffing in other schools.

"This is a pretty difficult climate to do projections in," Fernandes said. "I'm not sure the best statistician could project what's going to happen in the next four weeks in this climate. Things can also get better, and we have had families opt for hybrid [learning] during this time as well, so it really is a very difficult thing to project."

Ferandes said he was unsure why Dolan has seen such a large increase in students opting to move to distance learning over the past couple months.

"Dolan started with the fewest requests for distance learning," Fernandes said to Patch. "In some ways they 'caught up' to the other schools. I do believe the current rise in positive cases [of the coronavirus] across the city and country concerns families."

According to a tracker on its website, the district has seen a total of 316 confirmed positive cases of the virus since the start of school, impacting 23 schools in total. The tracker was last updated Thursday afternoon.

The resolution ultimately passed unanimously by a vote of 9-0-0. According to Fernandes, the positions will be posted by the district's human resources department and then filled.

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