Durham Reporter

Gov. Roy Cooper's decision to not allow full in-classroom instruction is receiving backlash from parents and education leaders as the new school year approaches, the Civitas Institute reported in July. Instead, students will have a mix of smaller in-person classes and remote instruction. 

“We know that many of the traditional public school’s remote learning options were not effective for students," conservative think-tank Civitas Institute President and CEO Donald Bryson said in the Civitas Institute's July 14 report. "They did not succeed in delivering a sound, basic and uniform education as required by the North  Carolina Constitution. Now we have parents that will not be able to work and employers who will lose good employees, amid a struggling North  Carolina economy.”

The "Plan B" part-time school option in some counties, including Wake and Mecklenberg, will have students in class one week out of every three. Wake and Mecklenberg's parents have expressed their distaste for part-time instruction. Each county has its own "Plan B" option. Some will choose to see elementary students more frequently and have high school students completely remotely. Others opt for in-person instruction two days per week and remote instruction three days per week.

However, the conservative think-tank reported that models that didn't require full in-class instruction can be harmful to parents financially and poor or at-risk students. 

“I would be forced to quit working and live off of my fiancé’s income which will not meet the needs of a family of five," Christy, a mother of three, said Civitas Institute reported. "And unemployment would be exhausted at that point for myself.”

Civitas also cited another parent, named Nick, who has three children in elementary school. 

"It would be impossible; we have three kids in three different schools," he said, Civitas reported. "We have a carefully planned carpool with our neighbors, so certain parents pick up and drop off on days they can revolve around work. Any sort of arbitrarily picked 50% schedule would be chaos, to every kid and parent subjected to it."

There are also education leaders who are not comfortable with the decision the governor made about reopening schools. 

"Distance learning will be a challenge to some of our families, and we all know that there is no substitute for the social interaction and hands-on learning of in-person instruction," Harnett County Board of Education member Jason Lemons said, Civitas reported. "We are a proud, hardworking, blue-collar county. There are concerns from many of our families about making a living while we will be creating a learning environment in the home."