Members of a parents’ group in the Southern Lehigh School District are planning to express their dissatisfaction with the manner in which education there has resumed amid the coronavirus pandemic at a rally in Upper Saucon Township Sunday.
The “Rally to Reopen Our Schools” being hosted by the group Southern Lehigh Advocates for Full Education will be held at 2 p.m. at Southern Lehigh High School in Center Valley.
A private Facebook event created by the group instructs attendees to wear masks, bring signs and park at the high school. It also states that children are welcome at the rally.
The “group will march along both sides of Preston Lane (and) then proceed to the Administration Building on (Rt.) 309,” the event description says. Representatives from various local media outlets have also been invited to attend the rally/march, members indicated.
Parents posting in the Southern Lehigh Advocates for Full Education private Facebook group say they are concerned about the district’s decision to switch to fully remote learning until Nov. 2 and the effect virtual education may be having on their children.
Southern Lehigh students are supposed to resume a hybrid model of learning–with both in-person and at-home instruction–by the start of the second quarter of the school year.
Posts in the Facebook group indicate that members have questioned the motives behind the Southern Lehigh School Board’s decision to adopt all-remote learning, which was reportedly due at least in part to district staffing issues at the start of the school year.
Members of the group also said they have been emailing administrators and school board members with their concerns as well as filing right-to-know requests with the district.
Although the Southern Lehigh and Saucon Valley school districts are adjacent to one another geographically–as well as similar in other ways–they represent opposite extremes in terms of how students are being educated roughly six months after the COVID-19 pandemic began in Pennsylvania.
While Southern Lehigh has all of its students learning fully online, Saucon Valley is one of very few districts in the area to have embraced a return to full in-school learning.
About 80 percent of Saucon parents sent their children back to the classroom, while the other 20 percent of parents opted for online instruction provided by the district.
Most school districts in the Lehigh Valley are currently using a hybrid model of education, which is what was recommended by state officials based on the number of COVID-19 cases in Lehigh and Northampton counties in August.
This week COVID-19 metrics monitored by the website CovidActNow.org indicated a spike in Northampton County’s infection rate. As of Thursday the rate was the fourth highest in the state of Pennsylvania.
On Friday, the Pennsylvania Department of Health reported 760 new COVID-19 cases statewide.
Over the past seven days, Northampton County has averaged 19 new cases per day while Lehigh County has reported an average of approximately 17 new cases a day, according to the weekly averages reported by CovidActNow.
In other COVID-19 related news:
Note: A limited amount of information from within a private Facebook group was reported in this story because the group’s creator, Vickie Maund, invited the author to join it as a member of the media.
