Surrounding school districts respond differently to COVID reopening

Dasan Zeller, Staff Writer

Due to governors’ orders on COVID-19 reopening metrics, both students and staff are stuck at home doing schoolwork. Everything is homework: activities, videos, labs are all  at home. Even in the small area that is Tigard-Tualatin School District (TTSD), inquisitive minds wonder what it is like in other school districts in Oregon and what they are doing to get back to school. 

In other school districts, they have different schedules much like in the West Linn-Wilsonville School District (WLWV). The WLWV high school class schedule runs from 8:40 a.m. to 2:10 p.m., but in TTSD classes go from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The Sherwood School District (SSD) schedule runs from 9 a.m. to 2:25 p.m., with office hours extending to 3:10 p.m., whereas in the Beaverton School District (BSD), the virtual schedule is 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Lake Oswego School District (LOSD) has the schedule of 8:05 a.m. to 3:50 p.m. 

If the amount of hours were calculated,WLWV and Beaverton students have about six hours of class time daily, TTSD and Sherwood students have about five hours, and Lake Oswego students have about seven hours. SSD has a 30-minute homeroom period after lunch.

At this time, most of the school districts mentioned are waiting to reopen based on metric requirements from the state. 

“Our district will stay the course, in Comprehensive Distance Learning (CDL), through the end of the first semester which ends February 4, 2021,” TTSD Superintendent Dr. Sue Rieke-Smith wrote in an update to district families. 

This means that no one is coming back to in-person school at least until Feb. 4. Then, the situation on Feb. 4 will determine what happens moving forward with this school year.