Riverview Charter returns to virtual-only classes after quarantine, director’s departure
Port Royal’s Riverview Charter School will return to virtual-only classes starting Monday “due to staffing reasons,” interim director Sarah Cox told parents in a Tuesday morning email.
The school reported at least two COVID-19 cases among staff members last week, one of which led to the entire sixth grade — about 60 in-person students — quarantining through Thursday.
“My goal for the school continues to be to have students in the building learning from their teachers,” Cox wrote Tuesday. “However, at this time I cannot safely open the building with so many teachers out and very little substitute coverage.”
Cox did not immediately respond to questions on how many staff members and students are quarantining, if widespread quarantines are the reason for the school shutdown, and whether quarantining teachers will be instructing students virtually.
According to reopening plans published on the school’s website, the school “reserves the right to discontinue on-site learning if it cannot safely staff the building due to a significant number of staff members in isolation or quarantine.”
Currently, the school is in a hybrid model, with some students remaining virtual-only and others coming to school four days a week and learning virtually on Fridays.
The school will return to that model on Jan. 4 following winter break, Cox said in the email.
Riverview’s board of directors voted Monday night to return to virtual-only classes under Cox’s recommendation. Parents will get more information “in the next few days” about “devices, material pick up and school meals,” per the email.
The school switched to the full four-days-a-week model on Oct. 26, one week after longtime director Alison Thomas abruptly announced she would resign on Nov. 1.
Thomas had reportedly clashed with the school’s board of directors on its reopening decision. When school began on Sept. 28, hybrid students at the K-8 school went to buildings for four “half days” per week; Thomas asked for students to stay in that model until Nov. 9 to prepare the school for larger crowds and less social distancing.
She also surveyed school staff about the board’s full-day reopening plan. Of the 64 staff members that responded, 73% wanted to stay in the half-day model.
She was replaced by interim director Cox, a fifth-grade teacher at the school.
While Riverview, a public charter school, is part of the Beaufort County School District, it has a separate board of directors and is mostly independent from district decisions on course offerings, reopening plans and similar operational decisions. It was the first school in the district to move away from a hybrid instructional model in favor of full-time, in-person classes.
As of Nov. 23, the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control reported fewer than five COVID-19 cases among students at the school since Sept. 4, and zero faculty cases.
These numbers are often behind school or district-level reporting. For example, DHEC’s website records only 12 COVID-19 cases among students and fewer than five among staff at Hilton Head Island High School since Sept. 4, while Beaufort County School District has reported 23 cases there since Sept. 28. The district does not directly report COVID-19 cases at Riverview Charter School.
The rest of Beaufort County School District is operating under a hybrid model, with 60% of the district’s 22,000-plus students attending classes in-person two days a week and 40% remaining virtual-only.
Superintendent Frank Rodriguez announced Nov. 13 that the district would move hybrid students to five days a week of in-person instruction starting Jan. 4, the same day that Riverview students will return to the four-day hybrid model.
During the announcement, Rodriguez and deputy superintendent Duke Bradley cited principals and teachers saying that hybrid instruction had contributed to a spike in teacher absences and stress during the fall semester, which has led the district to hire substitute teachers from Savannah in addition to its normal Beaufort County pool.
This story was originally published December 1, 2020 at 2:00 PM.