Laconia gets ready to go old-school with full-time, in-person classes

LACONIA — Public school students in the city could be going to school five days a week as soon as the second half of this month, Superintendent Steve Tucker said Thursday.

The plan calls for full-time, face-to-face instruction to be phased in over a four-week period, between Oct. 19 and Nov. 13, Tucker said.

The plan was approved by the School Board during a special meeting on Tuesday.

Currently most of the school district’s approximately 2,000 students are attending school under a hybrid schedule, alternating between in-class instruction and remote learning via computer.

School officials had hoped to begin phasing back into a normal school schedule this week, but that plan was pushed back because school officials were still figuring how they could maintain social distancing and other COVID precautions.

About 21 percent of the district’s students have opted to learn strictly by remote instruction through Nov. 13, the end of the first marking period. Twenty teachers are assigned to handle the remote instruction classes.

Tucker said all district parents must now commit to whether they want their child in school full-time or if they prefer full-time remote instruction. The online registration process began Thursday, and the deadline for registration is Oct. 8, Tucker said.

The district needs to know the attendance option for each student so it can plan how to allocate teachers and other classroom personnel, Tucker explained.

Meanwhile, the Huot Career and Technical Center – which serves Laconia and five surrounding school districts on the Laconia High School campus – will resume a five-day-a-week schedule on Oct. 5.

With COVID-19 a continuing health concern, Tucker acknowledged that parents with students in the district are split on whether to have their children return to the classroom, or continue their instruction strictly at home.

“But we are hearing from parents who want their kids to come to school every day. That’s the best scenario,” he said.

In the next two weeks the district will need to figure out how it will handle school lunches and bus transportation when classroom students will be on a five-day-a-week schedule. That plan is due to be presented to the School Board for its consideration next Tuesday.

Tucker stressed that the resumption of the normal school schedule will take place over time.

“It’s going to be a slow and gradual approach,” he said.

Depending on the situation, it might be certain groups of students who will begin face-to-face instruction five days a week on a particular date, or it may be an entire class, Tucker explained.

He said because the COVID data for the Lakes Region is "favorable", school officials are confident that students can safely return to school full-time, given the special health precautions the district has adopted that are designed to mitigate the spread of the virus.