BATON ROUGE – Though it's been a whirlwind of adjustments, the majority of students in East Baton Rouge are back to learning in person. The school system, though, would like to see more.

"There is no replacement for a face-to-face teacher,” Adam Smith said, the interim superintendent for the East Baton Rouge Parish School System.

Nearing the end of the first half of the school year Smith is recognizing there could be improvements to how they’re educating during the pandemic.

"We're finding that some families are struggling with virtual learning because for some families it's a challenge to support their kid in virtual learning,” Smith. said"Reading is not as bad, but especially math is a challenge."

There are still 11,000 students staying home and logging on to their computers for school. The majority of them, roughly 7,000, are in elementary grades.

All of those parents recently received a letter from Smith stating the school system has evaluated the effectiveness of virtual learning and recognize it's not a long term replacement. They're asking parents if their kids can return to school, to do so especially those who are failing more than one subject.

"Give us an opportunity to teach their kids face to face. We're doing our best to keep our students and staff safe with sanitizing the schools on Wednesdays,” Smith said.

The way teachers continue to grade their students may adjust as well.
"We want to make sure the grades are tied to meaningful learning and not just a grade that is punitive to that nature,” said Smith. “We’re having our teachers ask what do we want students to know, how do we know that they know it and when they struggle what do we do to assist them.”

The re-evaluation and changes being made is the latest attempt to prevent students from falling behind. The school system is ready to welcome back more students to ensure they're progressing during this strange learning world.