How 4-day-a-week classes are going at one SC school as COVID-19 pandemic continues
When teachers at River Springs Elementary School teach their young students how to line up this year, they’re getting a little help from the small alligator stickers on the floor.
Spaced out six feet apart in each hallway of this Irmo elementary school, the mascot marks where students can safely line up to move between classes, outside for a socially distant recess, or through the cafeteria for an individually packaged, sealed meal.
This week, there will be more little Gators on campus than at any time during this coronavirus-altered semester, part of Lexington-Richland 5’s slow moves toward returning to a regular school year.
Since Monday, all students in kindergarten through second grade in the district have returned to campus for four days a week of in-person instruction, up from the two days a week that students were getting when classes resumed Sept. 8.
Those grades make up about half of the 453 student body at River Springs, said principal Matt Gams. If the new schedule is successful at River Springs and the district’s other 12 elementary schools, third through sixth grades will join them by Oct. 19, followed by middle and high school students on Nov. 9.
The situation at River Springs may presage how those reopenings will go. When The State visited the campus on Tuesday, 17 first graders were learning the way they normally would, except each student had a mask over their face, divided from their teacher and classmates by translucent dividers on each desk, installed this week ahead of the switch to four-day classes.
“They do get to take a mask break, either in the hall or outdoors,” Gams explained.
Previously, students would alternate days on campus, half Mondays and Thursdays, and half Tuesdays and Fridays, although each class has stayed together throughout. Students above second grade, at River Springs and elsewhere, continue on that schedule, at least for now.
First-grade teacher Laura Jackson said her students have adapted well to all the changes.
“I think they understand it’s important to keep them safe, and allow them to come to school,” Jackson said. “They enjoy being here and seeing their friends, even if the interactions are different.”
Lexington-Richland 5’s administration made the decision after parents pushed for a full reopening to five days a week in school (on Wednesdays, students are still taking online classes while staff clean the schools). Lexington 1 also started younger students on a four-day-a-week schedule this week, while Richland 1 and 2 started the year with all classes online with plans to move toward in-school classes later in the semester.
As of Monday, at least one student or teacher had been diagnosed with COVID-19 at a dozen different Lexington-Richland 5 schools, although not at River Springs, and health officials don’t necessarily know if any of those cases was contracted at school.
Nurses have been alerted to how to handle any cases of the virus that do appear on campus, said district nursing supervisor Joanna Stanek. The school’s health services will conduct contact tracing, and anyone with whom an infected person had “close contact” — defined by DHEC guidelines as anyone who was within six feet of the person for more than 15 minutes — will be required to quarantine at home for 14 days.
If a student begins to feel sick at school, bagged personal protective equipment has been strategically placed around the school for nurses to use. Students with suspected cases are taken to a designated “sick” part of the nurses’ station, where beds surrounded by plastic curtains resemble a hospital ward.
To prevent those beds from being needed, the district has spent additional funds this semester on 195 hand sanitizer dispensers placed throughout its schools, plus 2,200 individual pump bottles and 330 gallons of sanitizer for refills; 1,500 boxes of latex gloves; 2,400 boxes of sanitary wipes; and 15,000 desk shields.
District Superintendent Christina Melton said the district office will continue to monitor case numbers as the reopening plan continues, as well as cleaning and sanitation efforts at each school.
“It’s not only exposure in the classroom we’re looking out for,” Melton said. “It’s bus drivers, it’s nutritional staff serving in the cafeteria. It’s not just teachers we’re worried about, it’s every position.”
The district is also monitoring the available space as more and more students are expected to come to campus. While some students are eating in a cafeteria where even the distance between tables is marked off on the floor, other classes are eating in converted science labs or music rooms. Classes rotate time on the playground out back, but they also can spend time outdoors in other areas around the school, like the bus loop.
Not all students are returning to class. A quarter of River Springs’ students, more than 100, have opted to go to a fully virtual learning experience, an option that will continue for the rest of the year.
But in Phylllis Griggs’ kindergarten class, students seem less intimidated by learning in a pandemic environment than you might expect.
“This is fun for them,” Griggs said. “This is all new and interesting for them. They were happy when we talked about it on the first day... I think it’s a great learning experience.”
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