The online meeting begins at 7:30 p.m.
During the Jan. 11 meeting, Assistant Superintendent Robert Rizzo outlined the factors that will affect that decision and updated the board on the current status of teaching methods.
One option the board may consider is eliminating hybrid learning for the upper grades. With hybrid, students attend for two days in-person and then online for three.
In the primary grades, Spring-Ford gives families two options; full five-day in-person learning, or all cyber-learning.
Rizzo said despite initial enthusiasm for hybrid learning. the number of students participating has dropped significantly since it first began.
Initially, 70 percent of students in grades 7 through 12 committed to attending in-person hybrid classes. That had dropped to 43 percent by December, said Rizzo.
"The reason a lot of high school parents chose virtual, is they didn't want to bother coming back two days a week. They would just rather stay home," said longtime board member Tom DiBello. "They just didn't feel connected. They went once or twice, there was nobody in the room."
If the board decides to eliminate hybrid, it would happen slowly, with students being added for additional days until, by week seven, all students would be in school for five days, or virtual for five days.
On Friday, Jan. 15, the district collected another survey of households. The results of that survey will be tabulated and presented to the board at the Jan. 19 meeting. Depending on what the board decides, that new plan would be implemented — or not.
School Nurse Trish Smith outlined the complications the disease poses for increasing in-person education. Several of the elementary schools have had to be closed over the past weeks due to cases being identified, and contact tracing and testing being undertaken.
In the first week of January, 88 different students and/or staff had to be sent home due to possible exposures.
"We've been open for six days and had three shut-downs," said board member Christina Melton.
Those sudden closures can play havoc with family schedules and led to the discussion of whether putting more students back in school is the right approach.
DiBello said he is "frustrated" at the pace plans are being considered.
"Now we're going to survey the parents again, and we go round and round," DiBello said. "We're in the third marking period. what, are we going to bring them back for the last marking period?"
"My position is, we start the kids back in the third marking period, or we just forget it," he said. "Souderton has been back since September," which has only had 1 closure. "There are districts there that are successfully doing it."
Board member Margaret Wright agreed that having kids come in four days a week may result in more students returning to class, but added, "it's not a race or a contest. It's a pandemic."
"We told parents we were going to go back to school in the third marking period. this is why I brought this up in December," said DiBello. "We're running out of time, one way or the other. We need to be able to tell these parents what's going to happen Feb. 2."
School Board President Colleen Zasowski replied that what the board told the community is that "we would go back if we had four weeks of low transmission. And we are so far into substantial spread. It might be better to just pull back and wait until Martin Luther King Day or the end of the third marking period."
"Ironically, the ones going to the parties are the same ones who says they want to be in our buildings," Wright said. "We want to get kids in school, but only if we can get the precautions into place."
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