Summit School District One Of The First To Ditch Fully Remote Learning Next Year
SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. (CBS4)- For the Summit School Board, the decision was significantly influenced by budget. Keeping fully remote learning going forward would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and board members believed it was time to do away with the virtual learning option of the last two years.
Kate Hudnut, president of the school board for Summit County said the teachers rose to the occasion but will be happy to have their classrooms back to normal.
"It's difficult," Hudnut explained. "They, of course, want to be in person with these kids... they prefer to be in person."
"Do we know that social and emotional learning is so important in person? Absolutely," she added.
Federal funding helped supply some of the costs for remote learning during the darkest months of the pandemic but with that dwindling down, Hudnut said it's time for school to come back to the way it used to be, for the time being.
"We are ready to turn on a dime to a certain extent," Hudnut said. "We certainly hope that this is behind us but if there are chapters where there is a surge, cases in the community, we can look at what kind of support that we would provide."
The board is still going to accommodate hybrid models for some of their student-athletes or students traveling often, as they have for years. The full remote learning will come to a stop though, and Hudnut said if families are still uncomfortable with that change there are still plenty of other districts their students can attend remotely from Summit County.