With COVID extensions of capacity in restaurants, nursing homes and retail stores, Belton ISD plans to move into Scenario 3 of the District's COVID-19 response.
High school students in Belton ISD have been operating under scenario four, where they have two days of in person learning and three days of learning from home. With the announcement of the return to in person learning, some students still find success despite
"As always, we will work with Bell County Public Health, use their guidance the guidance from our state and national organizations and make the best recommendation to you all for kids. My number one goal in all of this is to keep kids safe and get them in our schools and so we have to be able to have the right mitigation and the right safety precautions to do that," said Superintendent Dr. Matt Smith.
That guidance leading the school district to move forward with returning to full in-person learning.
Superintendent Matt Smith explains the move to scenario three was approved by the Bell County Public health office.
“As we continue to have students come back face-to-face, we have fewer at home learners and as we continue to see our numbers decrease regarding COVID cases in our community, we would hope that we will be able to get back," Smith said.
BISD first moved to part time in person learning back in September, but at the height of the pandemic back in March, they were 100% online.
"It was really hard I would say. Technology and making sure every student had access to internet so that way they could log on into the Zooms,” said BISD teacher Danielle Conner.
Getting back to the old routine is welcomed by Belton High AP History teacher Danielle Conner and senior Madison Farwell.
"It is challenging trying to balance teaching kids in person and on Zoom at the same time but the kids are very understanding," Conner said.
"Oh, the hardest part I think was not having face-to-face with the teacher to like be right there when you had a question," said Farwell.
After cruising through the challenges of online learning, with the help of Ms. Conner, Farwell was still able to ace her AP test. Something she knows she will undoubtedly do again with the BISD returning to the classroom full time.
“All my hard work paid off you know. Even though the circumstances in the Spring was not were not very good. So it was really nice to know that because I persevered and I work through it paid off," Farwell said.
It's a little taste of normalcy the two are thankful for.
"I really loved that we’re back in school and getting that social interaction because I think that’s really important for us especially as teenagers,” said Farwell.
Scenario three will not go into effect until October 5th, but those who still want to have learning online have the option available.
Madison Farwell is one of over 100 students who passed their AP exams for the 2019-2020 school year. BISD says they will also operate on an A/B schedule to minimize traffic between classes.