North Kingstown Sacrifices High Schoolers in Reopening Plan

North Kingstown Schools presented their reopening plan to the community late last week. The full in-person scenario brings elementary and middle school students back all day every day, but leaves high school students home more than they're in school.

The FULL IN-PERSON plan for our high school students brings them into the building every other day, and then releases them before lunch. How dishonest to label it anything more than hybrid! Tallying hours, this means that my student will get either 9 or 12 hours per week of in person learning. The plan goes downhill from here. High school students are being put into a semester model where classes will be started and completed by December. This essentially doubles the typical pacing, while expecting the kids to self-teach on the off days as no synchronous teaching will be provided. AP classes in particular will be daunting at college pace with exams being given months later in the spring. Academically this model will be a disaster! Socially and emotionally they are being devastated as well, with groups being split alphabetically rather than by class -leaving many without their close relationships for support. We were told by our school committee chair that this is somewhat by design as "they don't want the kids socializing". This despite the fact we have tragically faced two suicides in the past 2 years in our high school. Our kids mental health is as important as their physical health. CDC head Robert Redfiled agrees. Recently interviewed Redfield said "We're seeing, sadly, far greater suicides now than we are deaths from COVID. We're seeing far greater deaths from drug overdose that are above excess that we had as background than we are seeing the deaths from COVID,"

Our superintendent has indicated that his plan is equitable because "high school students can better handle distance learning". He has yet to provide any evidence to support that claim. Infante-Green doesn't believe that either saying yesterday "we know that kids do 100% better with in-person learning".

North Kingstown High school must do better and provide a true full in-person learning option.

Kimberly Lanowy
47 Sylvan Court, Saunderstown
I am a HS math teacher in SOUTH kingstown where we are bringing students back full time.