Parents protest in Beaufort this weekend for in-person school. What you need to know
Two parents are organizing a protest Friday and Saturday pressuring Beaufort County School District to offer in-person classes in Beaufort.
Organizer Devin Apgar said she originally posted a petition asking superintendent Frank Rodriguez to reverse his Aug. 4 decision to start schools completely online out of concern for her children, who attend Robert Smalls International Academy and Battery Creek High School.
“My kids don’t learn very well virtually,” she said. “In-person, in-class school works better for them … If people want to do virtual, that’s fine. But that choice was taken away from us.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, the Aug. 5 petition has more than 900 signatures.
But Apgar said she and her husband Shaun were worried that it “wasn’t enough noise to make.”
“It just feels like it was all ramped up in the beginning and now it’s kind of leveled out, or people are forgetting about it or aren’t talking about it as much,” she said. “But we’ve still got three weeks left before school starts.”
The protest, organized by the Apgars, will be held from noon to 8 p.m. Friday at Ribaut Road and Boundary Street.
It will continue Saturday at 8 a.m., but will move to the intersection of Ribaut Road and Depot and Bay streets, due to a separate planned rally supporting law enforcement.
Unlike a May protest over the district’s decision to hold remote graduations, Apgar said she will let attendees decide whether they want to wear masks or social distance.
How will school start?
Beaufort County schools will begin with online-only classes on Sept. 8, a decision that came about a month after the district launched its original plan to offer parents a choice between in-person and remote classes.
Rodriguez said he was motivated by the county’s steady increase of new COVID-19 cases, which peaked in July and has been going down in recent weeks. The county is still considered high-risk for spread of the virus.
Department of Education spokesman Ryan Brown said last week that “unless major health and safety obstacles exist, it will be a requirement” for districts to reopen buildings two weeks after their official start date — that’s Sept. 21 for Beaufort County.
That will likely mean a return to the hybrid plan with the parent choice that the district previously had in place.
The school board did not make any of the decisions around reopening schools. Its governance policy leaves operational and day-to-day decisions to the superintendent, something that Apgar said she took issue with.
“(Rodriguez) having the ultimate decision alone has a lot of people pretty p----- off,” Apgar said. “So a lot of people suggested doing a protest.”
The board did vote to endorse Rodriguez’s online-only announcement in a 6-2-2 vote on Aug. 4.
School board member Rachel Wisnefski, who represents parts of Bluffton, made a motion on Saturday for the district to offer in-person and virtual options on Sept. 8. She was the only one who voted in favor of the motion.
Wisnefski said she is not involved in the petition or protest, but is “a strong advocate for there being a choice for parents.”
A post to her Facebook page seeking parent comments on the reopening decision got more than 200 comments.
Wisnefski, whose children attend district schools, said she had received testimonies from many parents who could not afford to take time off work to monitor their children, and many who were worried about special education and English as a second language programs.
Wisnefski said she also received emails from daycare providers saying they “simply couldn’t meet the need” of parents.
“I was concerned about the most vulnerable of our students, and for single parents whose kids need to be in a face-to-face option,” she said.
This story was originally published August 19, 2020 at 3:35 PM.