Schools in Albemarle County have had very different approaches to reopening schools during the pandemic. Private schools such as Tandem and St. Anne’s Belfield have opted for in-person classes, while public schools are 100% virtual. 

St. Anne’s Belfield has had multiple students test positive for Covid, and subsequently, large portions of students have voluntarily switched to online learning, awaiting to see if more results come back positive before returning. Diego Russo, a current sophomore at STAB, says what he would most like to change about school is the wearing of a mask all day, but understands why he must do it. “Compared to online school, I would choose in-person anytime over Zoom classes.”It isn’t a perfect solution, but it’s the best in his opinion.

Another approach for Covid-learning is one week of in-person school followed by one week of virtual. This has been implemented by Tandem because it gives time for students who test positive to be quarantined before heading back to school every week. Caspar Henneman, a senior says, “We have five classes a day from 9:00-3:45 each for 50 minutes, with 10-15 minute breaks. One thing that I would want to change about this model is the splitting of the grades because if you have friends in the other group you literally never get to see them. It’s difficult to be in class online because the teacher is teaching half the class in person so if you’re online it’s harder to be engaged. It goes by pretty quick because you can actually see your friends in person and hang out with them which is nice.” Caspar, the former KTR team member, admits that C.H.S. only having school for 4 hours online is much more favorable than online school for 7 or 8 hours.

The most similar situation to what Charlottesville is doing would be how County schools are learning currently. Albemarle High School student Josie MacDonald gave her opinion: “I love online learning because it opens new methods of education for me. I can do school with my close friends safely and really enjoy myself while learning material. I don’t love Fridays being used as test days but I am definitely not opposed to staying in online school for the rest of the year. Although I would absolutely love a homecoming or prom.” Compared to CHS, Albemarle only has 4 classes per semester, allowing students to concentrate more on certain classes rather than divide attention across 8 classes. 

Many students have strong opinions about virtual learning, while some are fine with it, and many others desperately want to be back face-to-face. As the date for reevaluating Charlottesville City Schools approaches in one month, there is a lot of debate about the upcoming decision. In a survey sent to all CHS students, 73% said they would like to be doing in-person learning. The common theme among all responses is that students crave more interaction with one another and miss all of the little things that came with in-person school: seeing friends in the hallway, catching up with former teachers, and lunchtime together.