NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. — It's back to school for roughly 7,200 students in the Niagara Falls City School District.
About a third of students are doing 100% remote learning. The remainder are divided into two groups — school colors, blue and gold — and will alternate which days they are physically in school.
That means on any given day, about 2,500 students will be spread across the district's 11 schools.
All students pre-K through 12th grade will get a school-issued laptop.
The district was already considered a one-to-one district, meaning there's a device for each student. But the IT department was busy over the past several months getting everything ready.
"We spent our time from mid-March until today preparing teachers and doing workshops with teachers mainly around a single platform technology purpose and the ability to teach students how to use those devices to a higher level," said superintendent Mark Laurrie. "We're light years ahead of where we were six months ago. What the pandemic did is it really leveraged the awareness that we have to step up our game there,"
The district had to purchase more carrying cases and charging cords and had to update devices and content-filter them so they can only be used for school work.
One thing the district learned last spring when students first went home was that lack of internet access wasn't a huge problem across the city.
To fill in the gaps in internet coverage, the district got 250 wireless hot spots for homes, daycare centers, and even the local Boys and Girls Club.
They have extra hot spots if needed.
Laurrie said it's going to take a little time before all students have their devices in hand.
"The ability to deploy all of those is not going to happen on the first day. We're probably going to need about two weeks to get those deployed to every student," Laurrie said. "We are doing it very slowly, very methodically, with a purpose. We think that a stronger, slower start will lead us to better academic results down the line,"
Laurrie said students won't notice a ton of physical changes in schools. There's a limited amount of plexiglass, mostly at the front desk and in offices and other high-traffic areas.
"That's not a natural way for children to learn, with a polycarbonate, plexiglass surrounding. If we had to do that, it was our belief that we weren't ready to return. We made a judgment that we could return without it. You won't see that," said Laurrie.
There are extra hand sanitizer stations and furniture has been removed to allow for more spacing and social distancing.
For example, at Niagara Falls High School, the main cafeteria will only seat 75 students instead of the regular 300. A smaller gym was turned into a second cafeteria.
Teachers and staff had various training and workshops over the summer to prepare them to welcome back students and address any challenges students are facing with the return of school during a pandemic.
"We know this event in itself is traumatic. The pandemic is traumatic. The return to school can be traumatic. So we've really armed our teachers with a lot of trauma-care informed workshops so they are prepared to deal with the adverse child care experiences that kids may come back with," Laurrie said.