The talk of the town at Pennridge High School is the new ruling that students/classes are to go back to “normal” with a five day in- school week. A letter was sent out to families on February 5 announcing the change.             

At Pennridge the hybrid model of learning will no longer be an option. Students must attend physical school five days a week or virtually zoom into their classes five days a week. Reasoning behind this sudden change is unclear; many parents and students are concerned and have their opinions on this change. There are pros and cons to this situation, but is the health of students and staff or academic success more important?

There are many mixed emotions from both parents and students about the new change at Pennridge. Many say “why now” and others say “this is what we need”. At the beginning of the 2020-21 school year, Pennridge had made it either 5 days a week in school or completely virtual (no hybrid option) for both elementary and middle school students in the district while the high school had the hybrid option or fully virtual. The NY Times posted an article saying how many New York schools also had this system of younger students full time and older kids not. Many questioned why this was and why all of a sudden now they are changing the high school’s options. Many parents in the community want their children to return to school because they supposedly aren’t getting the education they should be by completing things online and not being in the classroom each day. With this being said, is it really safe to have this occur with having many kids in school at once? A poll that was conducted with Pennridge students showed that around 83% of them are going back to school full time. This concludes that the school will be holding over 50% of its students. When asked if they thought Pennridge will have proper safety precautions, Pennridge student Sam Kiwak a senior said “I think they are going to try their best to enforce proper safety but we all know kids won’t have their masks on all the time and we can’t rely on the teachers to thoroughly clean each desk between the classes”. Many students and parents are concerned about if desks will even be able to a 3 feet distance let alone the recommended 6 feet distance. 

The New York Times posted an article stating that “it is clear that many students learning remotely are falling behind” and this is another probable reason for the sudden change Pennridge made. Another poll that was conducted with Pennridge students showed that on a scale of 1 to 5, there was a pretty even number of students that thought hybrid learning was helpful, not helpful, and somewhere in the middle. Many students preferred the hybrid schedule and are sad to see it go because they felt that they were able to still maintain good grades and have more freedom. Others agree with the statement the NY times made about students falling behind and finding it difficult to maintain the grades they need. 

With all this being said, the Pennridge School district is trying everything possible to make this transition as safe as possible and in doing so Pennridge has come up with a new schedule resulting in shorter classes and a shorter day to decrease the amount of time students are in the building. Pennridge High school senior Raina Adelman said “I’m glad we’re not in school as long as we were before. It’ll be nice basically having the rest of the day to ourselves to get work done”.

 Whether students are for or against going back full time, many are also looking at the bright side which is that for the seniors it is a little bit more of a normal year for them. Like senior Sam Kiwak said “I’ll do anything to make our senior year better”. Things will take time with this change and in the letter sent out by the Pennridge School district it stated that “reported positive cases have begun to decrease”. Time will tell if this decision of returning 5 days a week in person was a good idea.