For fall classes, the East Tallahatchie School District Board of Trustees on Thursday night adopted a hybrid schedule featuring a combination of on-site and distance learning.
ETSD Superintendent Dr. Darron Edwards announced the decision Friday morning. More details will be forthcoming.
The hybrid model is one of three operational options set forward by a Mississippi Department of Education workgroup and outlined in the MDE publication, "Considerations for Reopening Mississippi Schools," made public last month.
Under a hybrid schedule, face-to-face instruction in the traditional school setting would be meshed with online teaching, as was undertaken in the spring after COVID-19 forced the closure of all Mississippi schools.
Many platforms, such as Google Classroom, Edgenuity, Edulastic, i-Ready and Zoom, to name a few, give educators the ability to communicate homework assignments and other information to students online.
Edwards said that in addition to the hybrid schedule this fall, the district also will have a contingency plan in place that would enable instruction to go completely virtual, all online, should the pandemic again cause the shuttering of schools for any length of time.
He noted that the guiding force in these decisions is to do whatever is in the best interests of both schoolteachers and students.
The ETSD invited public input on its fall strategy via a five-question "school re-opening survey" shared on the district website.
The West Tallahatchie School District recently announced that it will begin the 2020-21 school year with students learning from home through a virtual schedule, meaning all instruction will be online. Details have not been released.
