WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Texas (KXAN) — Parents and students across Williamson County are facing deadlines to decide what to do after the first three weeks of virtual learning.
Their decisions are playing out through district surveys.
In WilCo, there are significant differences when comparing the different cities.
“I don’t think there is a silent majority of parents that want to send their kid back, and are afraid to speak up. The other side is so loud,” said Round Rock ISD parent Shelia Kieser.
Kieser thinks that dynamic influenced the Round Rock ISD parent survey.
“I don’t feel like the voices of the working parents are being heard over the screams of those that can stay home,” said Kieser.
71% of Round Rock parents who responded opted for virtual learning, and 29% chose on-campus learning.
“Round Rock is very diverse,” said Kieser. “You have the very poor and you have the very well-off. We have to compromise. I think Round Rock did that.”
Kieser says she finished this last school year feeling impressed with Round Rock’s abundance of virtual learning resources, but that didn’t help the fact that she’s a working single parent who physically can’t be there to teach her children.
“I would get home around 4, and have to teach her in the evening, and on the weekends,” said Kieser. “She would say, ‘Mom, I don’t want you as a teacher, I want you as a mom.”
In Georgetown, the breakdown of parent responses is very different.
53% of parents there selected on-campus learning, and 47% selected remote learning. Those numbers were recently given during Georgetown’s August 10 work session.
The Texas Education Agency has given school districts the option to extend their fully-online model past the three weeks.
“There are so many of us…. if they come back and say: We are going to expand this for another 4 weeks, then we risk the loss of our jobs,” said Kieser.
Neither Georgetown nor Round Rock have requested that yet.
0 Comments