The Albany County School Board is prematurely moving Laramie
The Albany County School Board is prematurely moving Laramie Middle School (LMS) and Laramie High School (LHS) students and faculty to reopening phase tier one. The school board has decided Laramie middle and high school students will have full-time in-person learning starting March 22, instead of the hybrid format they’ve had since the pandemic hit that limits the number of students at school.
Yes, COVID cases in Albany County are on a downward trend, but moving forward with this decision is a step in the wrong direction. It not only jeopardizes the health and safety of teachers and K-12 students, but also student education.
Students and faculty at LHS and LMS have been operating with the hybrid format since the start of the school year. If plans change now, students and faculty would have to reconfigure their lives for the second time to meet the new requirements of the school board.
Tier one diminishes virtually all social distancing capabilities LMS and LHS have now. Albany County School Board estimates class sizes to be 20 to 22 students each with the transition, however some class sizes are much larger and makes socially distancing impossible.
As a former student at both LMS and LHS, I can attest to the tight quarters we had during regular conditions. We were packed like sardines at the middle school walking through the halls and several of the popular high school classes were zoos.
This would truly be a COVID breeding ground.
The flexibility of the hybrid schedule was given to students to slow the spread, but also importantly helped with the added burden the pandemic has brought. Class sizes became smaller, students have more time to talk with teachers one on one, and students at LHS have more availability to take college classes. Moving to tier one also strips the schedule students have finally become accustomed to and it has given them at least some regularity in their lives.
These are all valuable assets for students who have increasingly struggled academically since March.
Moreover, the added burden of this transition would heavily fall on LMS and LHS teachers. Not only would teachers and janitors have to take on new sanitation responsibilities in brief five minute passing periods, but they also have to accommodate for teaching virtual instruction also while teaching full-time.
Even now teachers are not able to quarantine after a student tests positive. If we were going back to full capacity, we would have to expect more cases and more absences from teachers.
Who will take over their role?
The supply of substitute teachers is already low and there is clearly not an abundance of teachers on standby to fill their shoes in times of illness. Besides, who wants to be a teacher during a pandemic? When a teacher gets sick, and they will if there is no social distancing in schools, student education suffers.
If not ourselves, we all know someone who has been infected.
For me, it was my little brother, a senior at LHS. Because K-12 learning was partially in person and he lived with one of my high-risk family members, my family made the difficult decision for him to move out at the age of 17 so he could continue attending school.
In November, he unfortunately got the virus from a friend at school. Obviously we cannot have complete control over this virus, but if my brother would have been living with my high risk family member the outcome could’ve been devastating.
I know I am not the only one who has a story like this, and for this reason full reopening would be indecent. We must protect not only the students and teachers themselves, but the broader Albany County community who could also be infected.
Albany County School Board, let’s give the Laramie community at least a little bit of certainty by not moving to a reopening phase too fast. This is a critical time and moving on this jeopardizes all the progress we have made. Frankly, it’s disconcerting the school board isn’t taking this seriously for a disease that has killed Albany County residents.
This article was editing Wednesday, February 24 in regard to the return date for in person classes. The original article said in person classes would start March 1 but that was corrected to March 22.
