‘Headaches and challenges’: Parents share concerns with start to Horry County school year
Before the first student stepped foot in a classroom, the Horry County school year was off to a bumpy start.
And now parents are expressing their frustration.
After initially delaying the start of the school year — from Aug. 17 to Sept. 8 — because of the coronavirus pandemic Horry County School Board members eventually settled on a hybrid model, a mix of in-person and virtual learning, due to the “medium” status of COVID-19 cases in the district. Parents and students were able to elect to start the school year all virtual, or two days of in person instruction, three days of virtual instruction.
But then, just a week into the school year, Horry County Superindendent Rick Maxey announced that those who had elected for all virtual learning could re-enroll in the hybrid model. More than 3,000 students opted for that option district-wide.
On Monday, parents expressed for the first time their disappointment with what they called a chaotic start to the school year.
“I am especially disappointed with the school board’s decision to make sweeping changes so soon into the school year,” said Pamela Jakubowski, who has a child in the district. “Not even two weeks into the school year and your solution to the vast confusion of a poorly planned virtual program was to re-open enrollment to brick-and-mortar schools, which has only exacerbated the issue.”
Other parents voiced similar complaints, noting that the move to reopen enrollment to the hybrid, brick-and-mortar option caused “chaos” to those who stuck with virtual learning. Parents who spoke before the Horry County School Board on Monday offered the first public comments to the governing body since schools first closed in March due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Several said they chose to enroll their children in virtual learning because they felt it would offer the most structure and stability week-to-week, instead of switching between in-person and virtual. Rather, they said, the district has bungled virtual learning, causing them to have to answer emails at late hours because teachers are over-worked and to become, essentially, their children’s teachers too.
Currently, Horry County students are enrolled in either an all-virtual semester, or a hybrid semester, with three days a week virtual learning and two days a week in-person. When Superindendent Rick Maxey announced Sept. 14 that the district would offer parents the option to transfer their children from virtual learning to in-person learning, more than 3,000 students took him up on the offer. Nearly 270 students requested to transfer from in-person learning to all-virtual learning when the registration period opened.
Today, schools are open with caution tape around shared facilities like drinking fountains, and social distancing markers in hallways and classrooms. Ahead of reopening, teachers across South Carolina expressed anxiety about schools reopening for in-person learning.
Katey Martin, a Conway resident and mother of a fourth-grader, said she chose virtual schooling because she thought it would offer more structure for her child week to week, rather than being concerned about COVID-19.
“But virtual school has been the opposite of structured with every day presenting more headaches and challenges,” she said. “It has caused major frustrations and concerns that our children are being left behind and are not a priority.”
Saying that she’s had to become her child’s full-time teacher, Martin said the only support she’s gotten on how to navigate the online curriculum has come from other parents, via a Facebook group she found.
“These parents have been the only source of information and help regarding the virtual curriculum,” she said.
According to data from the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, a total of 724 cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, have been reported in the state’s schools as of Sept. 24. Of those cases, 501 were reported positive cases among students, and 223 were reported positive cases among staff, including teachers.
In the Horry County School District, DHEC reports 10 schools with positive COVID-19 cases, though not specific numbers of cases because each school has less than five. Aynor High School, Conway Middle School, Kingston Elementary, Ocean Drive Elementary and Socastee Middle School all reported a handful of cases — less than five each — among faculty. St. James High School, Riverside Elementary School, Palmetto ACAD/Motorsports School, Myrtle Beach High School and North Myrtle Beach High School all reported a handful of cases — again, less than five each — among students.
Countywide, Horry has seen a total of 10,361 cases of COVID-19 as of Sunday, including 832 hospitalizations and 196 deaths.
Dean Blumberg, an instructor at Horry-Georgetown Technical College and a father with two children in Horry County Schools, said the district’s mishandling of virtual school caused his second-grader’s teacher to be moved to another class, a little more than a week into the school year.
“This means that all the crucial relationship-building, the thing that’s so important for learning, has to start over again,” he said. “The reality is that this could have been avoided through paid-teacher training, with vendors, throughout the summer.”
The option to re-enroll from virtual to brick-and-mortar has also caused issues with class size and students having access to teachers, said Ron Denley, a Little River resident with six children in the school system. HIs oldest son, he said, is currently enrolled in a class with 160 students. And one of his daughters was never assigned a physical education teacher.
“We have, in fact, lost teachers due to the overworking of them, them being underpaid and underappreciated, and the sheer amount of stress they have to face every day,” he told the board. “The amount of kinks and issues this school year has had for us virtual families is immeasurable.”
And one parent, Jakubowski, also raised the issue that parents opting for virtual school often have to print out classroom materials for their children — a cost that students attending brick-and-mortar schools don’t have to.
“The amount of printables in just one lesson can be no less than 10 sheets of paper. This is very costly and time consuming,” said Jakubowski. “The children attending brick-and-mortar schools are not having to provide their own worksheets. Why are we?”
Referencing his child losing a teacher just a week into the school year, Blumberg said he’s going to tell her it’s the school district’s fault.
“When my child asks why her completely overwhelmed and stressed out teacher is holding back tears on a Google Meet, when the teacher has informed her class that she just learned that she’s going to be leaving and somebody else will be taking over, I won’t tell her it’s unfortunate, and that sometimes they need to shuffle things around,” he said.
“I’ll tell her that mismanagement and a lack of support of behalf of Horry County Schools caused it.”
