‘Striking the balance’

Kris Long, Sports Editor

The Board of Education meeting last Wednesday was inconclusive as to when, how or why school will change back to five days a week. 

The general consensus seems to be that school will remain in the hybrid schedule for the foreseeable future — especially with the current infection rate at Kansas State University — although there might be some changes made to the hybrid model. 

Most people agree that hybrid learning isn’t ideal, and that parental instruction cannot live up to a trained teacher. The contention lies in whether it is safe to allow school back five days a week. No other towns with Big 12 schools have five day a week school, and even hybrid appears to be pushing it in Manhattan with current numbers. 

“[Hybrid is] what our clinical taskforce would advocate for,” Dr. Ryan Knopp, a family GP in Manhattan, said. “It’s the right middle ground to hopefully achieve both of those goals. You know, to have kids in in-person learning to some degree, but still do well to follow [guidelines and] to limit the spread.”

Mental health impacts are another major concern of the parents, teachers and students wanting to get back to school. Numerous accounts of mental health issues related to limited school time, especially for children with difficult home lives, were brought up in the meeting.

“I’m extremely [worried about mental health],” Knopp said. “My volume of visits to treat mental health care in children, teenagers, adults has skyrocketed over the last few months. So we fully recognize that’s a major issue… But we do have some solutions to help with mental health concerns, whether that’s great therapists in town, people in our health care field that focus on mental health medications, there are treatments. I do not have a solution for COVID.”

In a presentation at the meeting, a survey of secondary and elementary students showed that the majority of teachers did not think hybrid provided an excellent education (rating their success at a 4 or 5) but a majority did think they were doing okay (rated a 3 or above).  A majority also did not support returning to five days a week before Manhattan’s positivity rate falls below 10%. There is a concern that bringing school back five days a week would cause teachers to resign at a rate faster than they are at the moment, and hiring teachers is not an easy task in the current situation. 

Some of the ideas offered to change the secondary hybrid model were having seven-period days and staggering the days students were in school to a Monday-Thursday and Tuesday-Friday schedule. However, both of these increase risk. Moving to seven-period days approximately doubles the number of different people students are in contact with in a school day. Staggering schedules removes the deep cleaning days in between groups. Knopp did not support the move.

“No,” Knopp said.  “Everything you could ask me about that answer is always the same. You must employ all the [guidelines] if you want to pull this off successfully.”

The most probable scenario appears to be that the school will start by phasing in early learning (before third grade) to five-day if the numbers go down or, if they stay steady, at semester. This, however, is mostly speculation. But high school students shouldn’t expect hybrid to go away anytime soon. 

“Sometimes there’s just no easy alternative,” Knopp said. “My feeling is this is where we are for the year, school year 2020-2021. This is going to be a year-long journey ahead. I’m hopeful the next school year we can get away from some of these things.”