Due to COVID-19, students at WCHS were hybrid for all of third quarter. On March 15 the school board voted on students going to in-person five days a week. 

According to West Carrollton City Schools superintendent Dr. Andrea Townsend, the board waited until fourth quarter to send studetns back full time because: “We wanted to have consistency for our students and maintain safety protocols. We tried to open full-time in the fall, and that caused a huge spike in COVID-19 cases. The highest number of cases we had was at the start of [third] quarter.”

Dr. Andrea Townsend stated that students were more than welcome to be a part of the community meeting to decide on the district’s return to in person learning.  However, the meeting was not advertised towards students. 

Students should have been consulted on the decision to return to in-person learning because five days a week is too much. When we went from two days to five it made me almost fail my classes due to the amount of work and trying to figure out my schedule. I barely had time to get used to it before the quarter ended.

 Junior Jayde Neal agrees that when she was hybrid she benefited from that sturucture by getting caught up on work without getting overwhelmed. 

Sophomore Aicha Ziadi disagreed. She believes that when students were only in person twice a week, she fell behind in her classes and it was overall just messy. 

We all agree that we like the five days in person because we get to see our friends, but having an asynchronous Friday would have been really nice to catch up on school work. 

I asked Ziadi and Neal if they felt like the school board wanted us at the meetings to get our opinions. As a whole, Ziadi, Neal and I agreed that if the school board wanted us to go to meetings to get student perspective, they would promote the meetings on more platforms and advertise them at school.

At the March 15 meeting, most were under the impression that the four days in-person plan was supposed to be voted on. Dr. Townsend said, “…I presented information to the Board and the parents/staff who attended. The board then had a discussion during the meeting and made the determination to return five days. Boards can choose to change recommendations…” 

The school board should make more of an effort to advertise the community meetings on more platforms such as Instagram, the school news, or to our school emails if in fact they do really want our opinions.