The first day of e-learning at Athens City School went extremely well, Superintendent Trey Holladay said Monday.

While Limestone County Schools started back to school April 7 following spring break, city school students began Monday. The students were in school in spirit, not in person.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and Alabama State Superintendent of Education Eric Mackey announced March 26 public schools statewide would remain closed until at least June 5, past the end of the 2019-2020 school year, due to the continued spread of novel coronavirus.

The announcement meant all students in public K-12 schools would begin e-learning or distance learning from home beginning April 6. A declaration of emergency in the state allowed the governor to take the unprecedented action.

Athens teachers and officials took the past week to prepare for the e-learning and distance learning experience.

“We used last week as a pep rally week and to make sure everybody had access,” Holladay said.

4,300 city students

On Monday, some 4,300 city students attended classes either by internet on their Apple iPads and MacBooks or through mail-in lessons. About 3,800 city students learn through traditional classroom arrangements on a typical day, Holladay said. Students at Athens Renaissance School already take online classes, so nothing really changed for them, he said.

Although Holladay won’t get a report on the success of e-learning and distance learning until the instructional leadership team makes one Thursday, he believes the process is going “extremely well.”

Students use the internet often in traditional schools, but they are not accustomed to learning outside of classrooms and without being able to see or speak with their teachers, Holladay said.

He said online learning is definitely easier for older students because they spend more time online than younger students.

Holladay said schools are limiting the time they keep young students online to 30 minutes a day in the form of 10 three-minute lessons each day. He admitted this isn’t much time to teach a student, but he said the schools “are more concerned with quality than quantity.”

Parents were another factor in choosing 10 three-minute lessons a day.

“Parents are not (used to) teaching all day long, so we try not to overburden them,” Holladay said.

High school

As for high schoolers, they are doing lessons that take a couple hours per day.

Holladay said the lessons need to be longer because the students are learning new concepts that they have not previously gone over.

Students who have internet access at home can either use the computer they have at home or check out a computer from their school. Students in kindergarten through fifth grades use iPads, and students in sixth through 12th grades use MacBooks.

They checked those computers out last Thursday, Holladay said.

Some parents did not want their children to have online access except while at school, so they chose to receive mail-in lessons. Fewer than 50 students do not have Internet access and are instead using mail-in lessons or have arranged to get internet access from neighbors, a church, a store or the parking lot of their respective school.

Holladay said while the e-learning or distance learning approach is not ideal, public schools do not have any other alternative. The school year will end May 21, as was planned before coronavirus appeared.

More information

Student and their families can obtain more information about e-learning and distance learning by visiting https://acs-k12.org and following @AthensALSchools on Facebook and Twitter.