BY SYDNEY HOOVER
Lauren Burnley said the first day of trying to juggle the hybrid learning of her two elementary children was “completely overwhelming.”
“But the second day, it gets better,” she said. “And then you find a routine and how to do stuff, you know, you have to juggle multiple children in different classes with different schedules.”
One week into the Eudora School District’s hybrid learning model, families are finding ways to adjust to the new schooling schedule.
The Eudora School Board voted Sept. 10 to move into the A/B hybrid model as coronavirus cases in Douglas County spiked.
In this model, half of all students in each school attend in-person classes on Monday and Tuesday while the other half are remote, then the groups switch on Thursday and Friday. All students are virtual Wednesdays.
Burnley’s children, Landon and Lilli, are in fifth and third grade. Because of her work schedule, Burnley said she’s able to stay at home on days her kids are remote, and she’s found ways to balance helping both children with different assignments.
For other parents, work schedules don’t allow for them to stay home with their children on remote learning days. Eve Pierson enrolled her second grader, Audrey, in the district’s Hybrid Youth Program Extension.
The program allowed as many as 48 elementary students in each hybrid cohort to spend remote days at West Resource Center, where staff members help with remote learning.
Pierson said her daughter seems to enjoy the program, but said the district hasn’t provided enough communication on what students are doing throughout the day at the program.
“[We need] more communication about what their days are like because I really have no idea,” Pierson said. “When she's at HYPE, I have no idea what's going on over there.”
Despite that, Pierson said the program has helped transition between the different schooling phases. Audrey thrives at school, she said, and she’s liked having some social interaction and normalcy during remote days.
Courtney Duffy said her mother-in-law has been helpful in taking care of her daughter, Brylee, who is enrolled in the district’s early childhood program.
At the preschool, Brylee is in-person Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday in the mornings and is remote on Wednesday and in the afternoons. Duffy said she thinks younger kids like her daughter should be in school full time because it’s much more difficult for them to stay focused at a computer for a long period of time.
“She actually came to me and said that she wanted to go to school, that she wanted to be around kids, that she wanted to see her classmates, see her teacher,” Duffy said. “The fact that she couldn't do that, it broke her heart.”
Eudora High School senior Bryce Prawl said she finds it harder to focus on classwork during remote days, too. It’s easier to be in “school mode” in the physical classroom, she said, but at home it can feel like she and her classmates are “drowning in school work.”
Prawl said the first week of school when Eudora was fully in-person, her classmates seemed very excited and happy to be back with their classmates. She said she thinks the in-person model is the most effective, but she is thankful for teachers and administrators doing what they can to make the school year as normal as possible.
“I'm really appreciative of all the teachers doing their best and making a tough situation the best that it possibly can be,” Prawl said.
Bobi Mower agreed the in-person model is the best option, as she’s seen her children struggle with schoolwork more than normal while learning remotely, and she’s already seeing the effects on their grades.
Mower said while she thinks there are ways to make hybrid learning more effective, ultimately, being fully in-person is the best option.
The Eudora School Board will meet again Thursday to determine whether the district will stay in hybrid or move back to in-person learning depending on the rate of positive coronavirus cases in the county.
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