Like most major metro Atlanta school districts, the Fulton County Schools plans to start the year virtually. But the district hopes to bring students back into schools after Labor Day if coronavirus cases decrease significantly by then. At a school board meeting last week, Fulton Superintendent Mike Looney presented a four-phased plan where students would gradually return to face-to-face instruction.
“[The plan] allows us to turn school back on in a deliberate way to maximize safety of students and staff members so that we can react to the data that comes before us,” Looney said. “All we can really do is respond to the environment that we’ve been given.”
The first phase of the plan, scheduled to begin Sept. 8, would have some students returning to schools for brief periods of time each week. For example, Looney said, young children would have in-person instruction once a week.
“We would schedule a…session for every student in Pre-K through 2 to come into the school building and meet with their teacher one day a week for 90 minutes,” he said.
Schools will eventually work up to the fourth phase, where students attend school in person twice a week. Looney says schools won’t fully resume face-to-face instruction until Fulton County reaches less than 100 cases of Covid-19 per 100,000 people.
