MIDLAND, Texas — Midland ISD started bringing students back to school in person last week, starting with Pre-K students.
This week the district is phasing in K-2 at all elementary schools, 7th graders at all 5 junior high schools and 6th graders at YWLA and San Jacinto.
School officials say they moved into phasing students back to the classroom because data from local health officials supported this possibility.
"As you know we have been reinventing school almost every week," Lisa Goodnow, MISD chief academic officer said.
And district leaders say the process has run smoothly so far.
Their goal is to bring everyone back face to face as soon as they can.
"Even though they're socially distancing and they're all wearing masks, to be able to connect again, even in this kind of new reality is so important," Goodnow said.
"We are already working and creating sort of different alternatives and different calendars that can get us to a more full face-to-face," Goodnow said.
In order to get to this point, teachers have had to be extremely flexible, lesson planning for every potential possibility well before the school year started in their days of professional development.
And the schoolwork load this year has no doubt gotten heavier.
So the district says they're trying to address this.
"What we're having to do is potentially level right now and ensure that teachers are not overwhelmed by this big workload or that they have a lot of students that they're teaching in 3 or 4 different modalities," Goodnow said.
Next week the focus will be on high school students.
Midland ISD is zooming along one day and one week at a time.
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