A Switch to In-Person

As SMSD made the call to start this school year remotely, the desire for an in-person experience led some students to switch to private schools offering this option.

For parents and students alike, the appeal of switching to a private school is having the students return to school either in-person or doing some form of hybrid schooling, while public schools, like SMSD, have been doing online.

“For the public schools, we’re following the gating criteria and basing our decisions on data, whereas the private schools can make up their own decision, each school individually,” East principal Dr. Scott Sherman said.

The gating criteria Sherman references is released by the Johnson County Health Department. Public school districts used the COVID-19 statistics and updates outlined by the county when they decided which learning system would be safest for students.

After the district’s attempt at virtual learning during the fourth quarter of last school year, some students decided it would be in the best interest for their education to switch to a school where they can learn in a physical classroom.

While already making the jump from middle school to high school, Sion freshman Tara Alley felt she would work best in an in-person setting to start off her high school experience. She attended Indian Hills and was set on being a Lancer, but decided to transfer to Sion a week before school started after SMSD’s decision to go completely online.

“It was just kind of hard to talk to teachers,” Alley said. “I didn’t really understand most of the assignments because the teachers really couldn’t explain it unless you went on Zoom, and I’m not the best with talking to people not in-person.”

The start of the school year is when students meet new classmates, get involved in activities and begin to find their way around their high school. Common concerns among parents and students were that if students had to do their learning from home and meet people and teachers through video calls, they would be losing a crucial part of the high school experience — especially for freshmen. 

When the district announced that school would be fully online, Sion freshman Annika Griffin felt that she wouldn’t be able to get to know her peers and teachers as well in an online environment, causing her to consider switching to an in-person private school.

“It was my freshman year, so I thought that it would be kind of difficult to start off high school just doing online,” Griffin said.

Griffin has been best friends with Alley since the beginning of eighth grade. When she told Alley that she was thinking about transferring to Sion to pursue an in-person route and asked her if she wanted to join her, Alley couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

“I probably wouldn’t have been able to easily transfer if she hadn’t have gone with me,” Griffin said.

Sophomore Catherine Panko shares Alley and Griffin’s reservations about the difficulties of online learning, and although she planned on attending Pembroke Hill as a freshman, she chose to stay with East to be with her friends and join the golf team. But, when COVID-19 forced school to be online in March, Panko struggled. 

“Though my grades didn’t necessarily suffer, it definitely wasn’t ideal for me mentally,” Panko stated in an email. “I didn’t feel motivated and felt drained by the end of every day, even if I didn’t do much. There just wasn’t the same pressure and excitement as I’d have when nearing the end of the school year.”

At the beginning of August, Pembroke had already released a detailed plan for what the school year would look like, and given that Shawnee Mission was still going back and forth, Panko decided her original plan to attend Pembroke was the best option for her.

Alley, Panko and Griffin all decided to transfer to private schools, and they found the transferring process to be much simpler than expected. 

After unenrolling from East, getting their transcripts and filling out paperwork to transfer into the new school, all that needed to be done was processing tuition payment. For Griffin and Alley, Sion has an extra step — an interview to see if the girls would be a good fit at the school. But within a week, all three girls were no longer East students.

Although their new schools allow for in-person learning, changes are continually being made to the school day in order to keep all students, staff and families safe.

At both Pembroke and Sion, students have to wear masks all day and socially distance from other students and staff. Upon entering the buildings they get their temperature checked to make sure that they are below 100.4 F. Before and after class, they’re required to wipe down their desks, all spaced six feet apart from each other with tape marks on the floor. The schools also work on contact tracing so they can track down which students may have been directly exposed in the event of an outbreak. 

At Pembroke, the whole school gets tested weekly, and if cases arise, all students switch to online for a week. So far, they’ve done one week of online out of the five weeks they’ve been in school.

“I’ll definitely miss all of my friends and the entire golf team at East, but I’m also looking forward to making new friends and having new experiences,” Panko said in an email. “Once this all goes back to normal, I’m looking forward to a normal school year and being able to hang out with my friends, old and new.”