In an effort to get feedback from parents and staff on measures to reopen schools that were forced to temporarily close because of the COVID-19 pandemic, officials from the Lamar County School District have sent out surveys asking for opinions on those measures.
The district worked with a teacher committee and a parent committee to finalize surveys for each group, which were sent out via email or text on the morning of June 22 and will close at noon on June 29. District superintendent Tess Smith said the Mississippi Department of Education gave school officials three options on reopening: full traditional school, fully online school or a hybrid, which is the combination of traditional and online.
“The hybrid gives us more flexibility, so we chose to ask parents if they were given the option of online or traditional, which they would prefer,” Smith said. “We also asked about their preferences for face coverings for students and teachers, temperature checks, length of the school day, and even gave them an opportunity to list to list their greatest concerns or issues. Within the first few hours over 3,000 people had responded.”
The survey also featured a question about transportation.
“Busing is going to be an issue due to our numbers and our driver shortage,” Smith said. “We will clean buses between routes, but we are going to need a minimum of two per seat to continue to transport the numbers that we have in the past.”
