North Raleigh Today

Remote learning, forced upon school systems across the country during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowed education to continue, but it wasn’t for everyone.

With the crisis over, the Wake County Public School System considered parameters for in-home classes going forward with an Oct. 4 vote on limiting the number of days virtual learning can be used.

"It's incumbent upon us to identify individually for each student what their needs are, address any gaps they might have and ensure that they recovery quickly and move forward long-term and be successful,” Drew Cook, assistant superintendent of Academics for the Wake County Public School System, told WTVD. 

With the challenges that remote learning brought, school officials want to limit the use of that process in the future. Officials noted that, overall, students seemed to advance at a slower pace than expected during the virtual-learning time.

The idea of limiting how and when remote learning can be implemented elicited a range of opinions from disappointment to praise. 

"They just were robbed," parent Melissa Worrilow said, referencing the social isolation remote learning carries. 

Worrilow noted that her child didn’t flourish in the learn-at-home environment, and she thinks the school system has scheduled too many virtual learning days this year.

”With the school calendar this year, instead of trying to add more in-person learning days, they have gone in the opposite way, trying to add more early release days and remote learning days,” she said. “I just think it's better for kids to learn in the classroom."

But parent Karen Schaeffer's grandson suffers from anxiety and has been thriving in a virtual environment.

"He did so well,” Schaeffer said. “He could do it at his pace, he could do it in his timeframe, he could ask questions when he could formulate them in his mind. It was perfect. He really excelled."