Moving to the Next Phase of School Reopening

Nearly half of the 907 public school districts tracked by Education Week opened school fully remote this year. This includes more than three-quarters of the nation’s largest districts, which serve high proportions of students with the greatest learning and social-emotional needs stemming from the pandemic. Now, many district leaders are working feverishly to determine if they can transition to some in-person learning for their students as the school year goes on.

For more than six months, our team at ERS has partnered closely with eight large school districts in developing prototypes, models and tools to support district planning, grounded in guiding principles. From that work, we have now zeroed in on three challenging questions that will have an outsized impact on student and educator experiences in a transition to any in-person school:

1. What should be our next step—hybrid or in-person?
2. How do we meet the needs of in-person and remote students simultaneously?
3. How should we handle teacher opt-outs from in-person instruction?

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