SC Midlands school welcomed students back to campus. Here’s what happened

For the first time since March, students returned to Batesburg-Leesville Elementary school on Tuesday.

Single-digit groups of masked students followed teachers through hallways adorned with social distancing guidelines and mask information.

In the cafeteria, student-made art projects from February’s Black History Month continued to hang on the walls while tables were set up for students to quickly grab their meals and leave.

Inside the half-full classroom, students sitting six feet apart took off their masks and worked on word searches or colored while they waited for their one-on-one session with the teacher, during which the masks went back on. During the one-on-one sessions, teachers evaluated the students’ academic level on topics like reading and math.

It was almost like a normal school day.

Almost.

While students have returned to the classroom at Lexington 3 school district, classes haven’t officially started yet. These five days before the school year starts, termed LEAP — Learn, Evaluate, Analyze, and Prepare —days and paid for by the S.C. Department of Education, are mostly there to get everyone situated.

“The main focus is we’re trying to get kids acclimated on safety procedures both in and out of the classroom” and to assess academic progress, said Matt Velasquez, the principal at Batesburg-Leesville Elementary, as he gave a reporter and a photographer from The State a tour of the school Tuesday.

After months of virtual education, coronavirus anxiety and hand-wringing about school reopening, Lexington 3 is among the first districts in the S.C. Midlands to have students return to the classroom. Some districts throughout the state have already started as early as Aug. 3, said S.C. Department of Education spokesman Ryan Brown.

Like nearly all S.C. school districts, Lexington 3 is offering students the option of in-person learning or online learning, said district spokeswoman Mackenzie Taylor. At Batesburg-Leesville Elementary, roughly 60% of parents have opted for in-person education while the remaining 40% want to do a virtual education, Velasquez said.

That’s among the highest rates of district parents who want virtual learning in the district, and most of those parents choose virtual-only education because a member of the family has an underlying health condition, Velasquez said.

The school has implemented safety protocols like staggering dismissal times and placing student breakfasts on a table in the hallway so staff don’t have to walk into multiple classrooms delivering meals. Students get their temperatures taken when they enter the school, and that will continue every day at least initially.

Aside from all the safety protocols, this first day of students in LEAP classes feels similar to most first days of school, said Shila Tharp, Batesburg-Leesville Elementary’s most recent teacher of the year.

“I was excited,” Tharp, a third-grade teacher, told The State. “I just love being with the kids.”

Asked if she was nervous to return to classes, Tharp said she was, but that most of that is natural first-day-of-school nerves.

While many adults throughout the country have, for one reason or another, refused to wear masks, the students at Batesburg-Leesville Elementary have embraced the mask requirement, Velasquez said.

“I did not have one kid that got out of the car without a mask,” Velasquez said. “Not one kid didn’t let me take their temperature.”

Social distancing extends even to the playground, where students stay with their classroom group in designated parts of the playground.

Though school officials have transformed the school to be COVID-ready, there is still much to do, Velasquez said.

For example, Velasquez wants to make the hallways one-way only, like at a grocery store, to minimize student traffic, he said. Right now, hallways are two-way. He knows the school needs more thermometers to test every student who comes into the building and spray paint to section off parts of the large field near the school to keep class cohorts separate before school officially starts Aug. 31.

“We’ve got two weeks to back up and punt and see what’s working and what’s not,” Velasquez said.

This story was originally published August 11, 2020 at 3:40 PM.