During a chaotic Salt Lake City school board meeting Tuesday night — filled with bickering and backlash and one member accusing teachers who want to continue with online instruction of being “lazy” — members were able to agree on only one thing: delaying the start of the year so that the first day of classes would be pushed to Sept. 8.
Any other decisions, like whether those classes will be in person or not, were put off until next month.
“I think this has been a difficult process to go through,” said the board’s president, Melissa Ford, in the online meeting. “We’ve never been in a situation like this before with a pandemic.”
The board had convened for a special meeting with the intention of voting on a plan for how they would return to school and how students would be kept safe from the coronavirus. After two hours of debate, though, it ended with mostly hurt feelings and few answers. One board member insisted that the meeting end at exactly 6 p.m. because she had other plans. Another played solitaire on his computer screen while several members shouted over one another.
Meanwhile, parents wrote in the comment section: “PLEASE MAKE A DECISION” and “WE NEED TO KNOW WHAT WE’RE DOING.”
Salt Lake City School District has become a focal point across the state when it comes to reopening. The district is the only one that remains in an area — Utah’s capital city — still deemed “orange,” or at moderate risk for the coronavirus spreading.
Under that status, classes were supposed to be held remotely. But the governor made an exception last week to allow the district to welcome students back along with every other K-12 school in the state.
The Salt Lake Tribune will update this developing story.
from The Salt Lake Tribune https://ift.tt/2CtLxKa
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