New Iowa law requires 100% in-person learning

DES MOINES, Iowa (WHO) — Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a law Friday morning requiring all Iowa schools to offer a 100% in-person learning option starting Feb. 15.

“We’re going to comply with the new law of course. We’re still working on a few final details, but we fully intend to have a five day a week option available to all of our students and all of our families starting Monday, February 15,” Des Moines Public Schools Director of Communications Phil Roeder said.

The schools can also still offer virtual and hybrid options, but Des Moines Public Schools said after Feb. 15, they will eliminate the hybrid option.

“It’s just not effective for us with our current staffing to be able to have three different items on the menu,” Roeder said.

One Urbandale parent said this law couldn’t come soon enough since she said her kids don’t do well with the hybrid model.

“With having the older kids, if they’re not told exactly what to do all day long, I might have a sleeping child at noon when I go home for lunch. I need her to be in there feeling comfortable and being with classmates and not being secluded up in a room all day on a computer watching school. I want them to have that interaction with people. That’s a big thing,” Urbandale parent Tiffiny Gaskill said.

One DMPS teacher said in-person learning is not any better than the virtual model.

“Forcing students to be in the building five days a week is not going to improve the quality of education that they could get safely virtually. What’s going to happen unfortunately is students are going to be in a desk with a mask on at a computer still receiving virtual instruction, quality virtual instruction, but they are going to be putting themselves at risk by being surrounded by other potential virus carriers,” Roosevelt High School teacher Michael Davenport said.

DMPS said classrooms will double in size from around nine students per class in the hybrid model to 20 to 30 students per class for 100% in-person learning.

“We do want to be honest with our families about what that will look like … The fact of the matter is COVID-19 is still here,” Roeder said.

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Roeder said social distancing will be near impossible, but starting Feb 1, teachers and staff can start to get vaccinated if they can sign up for an appointment.

“We don’t have access to actually make the appointments because they’re gone. I spent 20 minutes trying to get online today and I couldn’t do it. I’m not going to be vaccinated by the time students are forced back into the building. I become a threat to my family and my children at home, as well as to the children in the classroom because I’m not vaccinated,” Davenport said.

The Urbandale parent looks to other schools that she says have not had issues with 100% in-person learning.

“I shouldn’t say everyone else is doing it, but watching the success in the surrounding school districts go through it, I don’t have that concern,” Gaskill said.

On Monday, both Des Moines Public Schools and Urbandale Community School District will give parents the options to choose between 100% virtual learning and 100% in-person learning.