Asbury Park Charter School Begins In-Person Instruction

College Achieve Greater Asbury opened its 3rd Avenue campus to in-person learning on Monday, October 5—a decision spurred by the coronavirus-free operation of their partner school in Paterson and parents needing more choices. The public charter school, serving nearly 400 kindergarten through 9th grade students, now offers families the choice between full remote learning or full in-person learning, in a move designed to protect vulnerable students while also providing a safe learning environment during the ongoing public health crisis.

College Achieve Asbury modeled many of its reopening plan safety procedures on thoseimplemented at College Achieve Paterson. The plan includes common protocols andprecautions, including daily symptoms surveys, temperature checks, mandatory mask wearing and enforced social-distancing measures.

School leaders say the smooth transition back to in-person instruction depended on the lessons and collaboration from its colleagues at the other campus, such as running an opening “dry run” with teachers and staff, holding multiple online town hall events to explain protocols to parents and designing detailed plans to coordinate student traffic at the start and end of the school day.

In September, while more than a dozen New Jersey schools were forced to pause in-person instruction due to students or teachers testing positive for the coronavirus, College Achieve Asbury committed to a fully remote-learning plan that gave students five hours of live, synchronous instruction with a teacher each day. Meanwhile, the College Achieve Public Schools network’s Paterson campus opened to in-person classes, reporting no coronavirus infections among students or teachers.

“Keeping all of our students, families and staff safe is our first priority,” said College Achieve Asbury school leader Jodi Mcinerney. “That safety isn’t just about containing the coronavirus, but extends to students’ mental and physical well-being at home. This health crisis has created a lot of questions with no easy answers, including what schools’ role is in keeping kids safe at home, where they might not have a guardian in the home full time or have a safe place to play in their neighborhood.”

Like at the Paterson campus, College Achieve Asbury will maintain a strict quarantine rule for students or staff that come into contact with an ill person and ongoing contact tracing. Within the school, grade levels will be isolated, meaning that teachers and students will have limited interaction with anyone outside their grade level.

Three quarters of College Achieve Asbury students are Black and one quarter of students are Hispanic. COVID-19 has taken a disproportionate toll on Black and Hispanic people with both populations experiencing a higher ratio of cases, hospitalizations and death. This has led many people of color to express concern about having children returning to in-person classes. In August, a Washington Post poll found that 79% of Black families and 72% of Hispanic families thought in-person classes were “not safe.”

“We know that families are concerned about their students’ safety and also want to ensure their children don’t fall behind,” said Mcinerney. “We’ve been listening closely to our families’ concerns and believe that safely returning to school is in the best interest of everyone.”

Throughout the summer and again last week, College Achieve Asbury surveyed parents to understand how they felt about returning to in-person classes. Mcinerney reports that half of parents indicated they were ready to have students return to school. Many cited concerns about students remaining at home alone while they worked, potential learning loss and neighborhood safety in Asbury Park. The community has seen a rise in gang violence recently. In August, a 4- year-old girl was shot while playing outside her home.

About half of families have decided to continue their students in remoteonlyclasses. College Achieve Asbury began the school year in September with full remote learning, which both families and staff say was a success. Students received five hours of live, online instruction from a teacher each day. The school reports that daily attendance averaged at 96% for remote instruction.

“Our students are vulnerable, not just to this virus, but to a lost year of learning if schools don’t act,” says Mike Piscal, CEO of the College Achieve Public Schools network. “Remote learning can be done well, but it’ll never be a replacement for in-person instruction with a caring teacher. In the spring, our teachers had already built a strong relationship with students that carried over to their remote lessons. Now, in a new school year, students are with new teachers and they need that in-person time to form the bonds that we know are so crucial to learning.”

College Achieve Public Schools (CAPS) is a network of K-12 schools in Paterson, Plainfield, Asbury Park and Neptune Township that was created to serve youth who have enormous potential but limited resources. Its mission is to prepare all students to excel in and graduate from the top colleges and universities in the nation. Learn more at CollegeAchieveAsbury.org/