Fannin County students, parents and faculty can expect a number of curriculum changes in the 2020-2021 school year including a 100% return to face-to-face instruction.
“We will not offer an Online Learning (OLL) program for elementary or middle school students once this school year ends,” Fannin County School System (FCSS) Deputy Superintendent of Achievement & Governance Sarah Rigdon said at a Board of Education meeting Thursday, March 11. “Remember, OLL was only available in Kindergarten through eighth grades as a response to the pandemic. We are looking forward to returning to 100% face-to-face instruction in Kindergarten through eighth grades.”
Fannin County High School will also no longer be offering voluntary online learning next school year, however, credit recovery will remain available and some students will be enrolled in computer-based courses with assignments based on what a student needs to complete in order to graduate.
The high school students who were online learners will return to face-to-face instruction.
“The FCSS will continue to offer Hospital/Homebound Services for students who are ill, injured or have a qualified medical need,” Rigdon said. “Hospital/Homebound Services is not the same program as Online Learning.”
The system will also move to “virtual days” rather than COLD learning days, which were implemented in the 2019-2020 school year as an experiment to “minimize learning time lost due to inclement weather or other issues requiring a school closure.”
“Since the COLD inception, we’ve weathered a total school shut down from March to May of 2020, and we also managed, almost a full year now, of offering families a choice between face-to-face instruction or Online Learning,” Rigdon said. “It would be an understatement to say that we’ve come a long way.”
Beginning in the 2021-2022 school year, parents and employees can plan for every instructional day on the school calendar to be a school day, Rigdon said.
“We will not necessarily exhaust the traditional four days of ‘forgiveness’ as we did with COLD,” she said.
The 1:1 device initiative will extend to third through fifth grade students, and on days where regular school must be canceled, “Virtual Learning Days” will be implemented. However, the system will move away from pre-planned lessons to synchronous instruction where students will continue to learn exactly where they left off in class.