Tens of thousands of students in Shelby County began the 2020 fall semester by logging into school remotely. For the state's largest school district, Shelby County Schools, the decision to keep its 110,000 students at home during the pandemic posed an uprecedented educational challenge as both students and teachers met for face-to-face instruction via the Internet.
Despite some technical glitches and frustrations, school leaders say the first day back was ultimately a success.
Schools weren’t entirely empty on Monday—many teachers streamed live from their classrooms as they navigated muting and unmuting mics and monitored chat boxes on the online platform Microsoft Teams.
Some schools allowed children of teachers to be on campus. That’s how high schooler Jayla Bryant and her brother got a whole classroom to themselves at Highland Oaks Middle School. But, like everyone else, they were learning virtually on this first day back to school.
Bryant says for the most part classes went smoothly, but it wasn’t without drawbacks.
“Since it’s my senior year, it would be great to see my class[mates] on my last first day,” she said. “That’s really the biggest thing—just not being able to see my friends and stuff like that.”
School leaders said students and teachers will likely use the first few days to get comfortable with technology.
Pia Stewart, a counselor at Highland Oaks, spent her day providing tech support to flustered parents.
Common issues included trouble logging in or being admitted to the wrong class.
"Because they've been out a while, they're anxious about getting their children back into the learning realm," Stewart says.
While Shelby County’s municipal school districts opted for hybrid in-person and online instruction models, at least to begin when they started earlier this month, some have already had to transition to online only for a period because of coronavirus outbreaks.
Shelby County Schools decided in late July to start the fall semester entirely virtually, saying community transmission of the virus was too high to keep students and teachers safe.
Superintendent Joris Ray defended that decision Monday, as new daily cases remain in the triple digits countywide, averaging between 150-200 a day in the past week.
“If we don’t get it right, our community suffers. If we don’t get it right, our surrounding states suffer,” he said while touring schools and meeting with principals. “We’re going to continue to follow science. We’re going to continue to follow the data on a daily basis.”
In order to consider a return to in-person instruction, Ray said new cases would need to be trending downwards in the "single digits" for two weeks.
"It's about not contributing to the community spread," he said.
So far, about 90 percent of students have picked up their at-home digital devices for the school year. Distribution of the tablets, laptops and wifi hotspots will continue this week.
Getting students to log on—and then stay on all day while at home—will be the next challenge. About 80 percent of students powered up their devices on on Monday, the district said.