Explanation and Description of Virtual In-Person Option

Due to the impact that the pandemic has had on faculty and staff, not only testing positive, but the requirements of mandatory quarantine of healthy staff, the district made the difficult decision to go with a full virtual instructional model grades K-12 following the holiday recess. We will reevaluate our ability to return to our original hybrid and in person model following the February break.

As we are well aware, our youngest learners may struggle the most with a full virtual model. In addition, at that time we lacked 1:1 devices for every student. Therefore we provided an in person virtual option that parents opted into. This was not mandatory, just an option to assist both learners and their families.

We had nearly 250 ES sign up for this option, along with 2 exceptional learner classes at the Jr/Sr HS we have approximately 19% of our entire student population in attendance. Students have been organized by cohort, spread out socially distant among several classrooms, and in some cases (5th grade) organized in a very large space in the HS cafeteria. Students are watching their teachers stream virtual lessons, just like their peers who are learning virtually from home.

Now, as we have received a large order of chrome books, this will assist us in further maintaining safe, socially distanced learning environments in large spaces as students will be exposed to more 1:1 learning opportunities with a device.

Lastly, given the spikes in cases in our region and Mechanicville in particular we are contracting with Quick Response to provide a deep clean to both buildings over the course of this weekend. Additional cleaning rounds will be added to the existing routines as the health and safety of our students, staff, and entire school community is our number one priority.