‘Living history.’ For first time in year, students return to Lexington middle, high schools.

On his first day on campus in more than a year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Bryson Berry, a senior at Lexington’s Frederick Douglass High School, on Monday had high hopes that “everything could stay normal.”

“Prom, graduation, I didn’t get that last year,” said Berry, who is headed to Dartmouth College in the fall. “I’m focused on those things and keeping my grades up.”

Returning to classrooms for the first time in a year meant “we are living history,” principal Lester Diaz said.

Students in grades 6, 9 and 12 at all main Fayette middle and high schools returned to the classroom Monday for the first time since the coronavirus shut down Kentucky schools in March 2020.

In a gradual return to in-person learning, grades 7, 8, 10 and 11 are scheduled to return March 15. Kindergarten through second graders returned Feb. 22 and third through fifth graders on March 3. Of 14,000 students K-5, more than 96 percent of students returned to in-person last week. In grades 6, 9 and 12, about 6,561 students returned Monday.

At Douglass, eighty percent of students, or more than 700, returned to in-person learning and by the time class started, the day was going like “clockwork,” Diaz said. In general, only about twenty percent of students chose to continue remote learning.

In addition to new rules of wearing masks, abiding by social distancing and temperature checks, students at Douglass will eat breakfast in their classrooms. They will have assigned seats in the cafeteria for lunch and in the classroom so they can be tracked if positive cases arise, according to new guidelines on the school website.

Desks and chairs are cleaned after every class and at the end of the day. Bathrooms were scrubbed every 30 minutes.

“We’ve got a really good plan,” he said.

Diaz said he encouraged students to “keep your germs to yourselves.”

Teacher Jeana Gillis said students who want desk shields can have them. Plexiglass shields were hung in front of some teacher’s desks. On Monday morning, some teachers taught student learning virtually and in-person simultaneously.

“We’ve never been asked to do so much,” said Diaz. In addition to delivering instruction, there’s extra things teachers have to do all day long for the good of students and the community to ensure they can run the school in a safe manner, said Diaz.

Even before the return Monday, some students who were failing because virtual instruction wasn’t working for them have been attending special classes in-person at Douglass for a few hours each day since Feb. 22. Grades improved, said Diaz. He said to help students who are behind, Douglass will hold Saturday classes, after-school classes and summer school.

Meanwhile, at E.J. Hayes Middle School, 85 percent of that school’s sixth graders returned to in-person learning for the first time this year. There too, it was business as usual, said principal Dave Hoskins.

While many middle and high students returned to classrooms Monday, a bus driver shortage has caused a delay in the in-person return for Fayette school’s special programs, including the three technical centers, and Carter G. Woodson Academy, Family Care Center, Martin Luther King Academy, Opportunity Middle College, STEAM Academy, Success Academy, The Learning Center and The Stables.

About 1,885 students out of the district’s nearly 41,000 attend those 11 programs and are now attending class virtually.

The roughly 1,000 students who attend the three technical schools -- Eastside Technical Center, Locust Trace AgriScience Center, and Southside Technical Center – for a part of the day are attending their home high schools in-person until the technical buildings reopen.

District officials said they will announce an in-person return date for the special programs by March 15.

In Fayette County, as of Friday, about 152 students and 11 staff members have been quarantined since students started returning Feb. 22.

Among students and staff who have been on campus since K-2 students returned Feb. 22 in person, there have been about 12 positive cases at nine separate schools.

In the latest report provided by district officials, one student at Brenda Cowan Elementary tested positive and 18 students were in quarantine. One transportation employee tested positive, and three students at Russell Cave Elementary were in quarantine.

Fayette, the state’s second largest school district, was also one of the last in Kentucky to return to widespread face-to-face instruction with officials previously citing a high number of COVID-19 cases.

This story was originally published March 8, 2021 at 9:46 AM.