Mother petitions Deer Lakes to go to in-school instruction 5 days a week

A mother whose three children go to school in Deer Lakes School District has started a petition asking district officials to reinstate in-person instruction five days a week.

Traci Stotler, who mounted a petition drive on Change.org, said it’s not physically, mentally or emotionally healthy for young, developing children to spend a vast majority of their day in front of a screen.

She believes in-person instruction in a classroom is better than a virtual education.

“I urge you to open the schools five days a week,” Stotler wrote in the petition addressed to Superintendent Janell Logue-Belden and members of the school board. “Children are suffering the consequences of these changes, and if we could look into the future, I worry that this will have proven devastating to the children.”

The petition had 765 signatures around midday Thursday. Its goal is 1,000.

Reached by email Thursday, Stotler said she started the petition after hearing from other frustrated parents. She has children in the third, fifth and eighth grades.

She plans to present the petition to the school board during its Oct. 13 agenda meeting.

“When I spoke to several parents, I felt as though we all were disheartened about school,” Stotler said. “I truly feel that some families are suffering in our community.”

Deer Lakes’ school year began Aug. 31. Students were given the choice of hybrid or fully online learning. Students who chose hybrid learning attend in-person classes twice a week and learn remotely the other three days.

Stotler doesn’t think the district’s hybrid-learning plan is sufficient. She said a number of school districts and private schools in Pennsylvania are returning to in-person learning five days a week.

One of those is Leechburg Area School District, which on Wednesday approved students returning to face-to-face instruction on Oct. 5. Another district, New Kensington-Arnold, gave parents the option of having their children in school full-time or learning online from home full-time.

Stotler said parents should be able to decide whether their child learns in school or virtually. When initially surveyed, Deer Lakes parents supported their students returning to school five days a week. But the school board decided to go with a hybrid model.

“The opinion of the parent should matter most in this situation,” Stotler said.

Stotler said letting parents make that decision would take responsibility and pressure off the school board.

She said parents would like to know when and if their children can return to the classroom, and a plan from the board to revisit coronavirus-related data for reopenings would give them hope.

Logue-Belden said the district is considering all options related to instruction during the coronavirus pandemic and the goal is to get children back into schools five days a week as soon as it is safe to do so. However, she added, the first priority has to be maintaining the health and safety of students and staff.

Logue-Belden said the district is continuing to follow guidance from the Allegheny County Health Department, the Pennsylvania Department of Health and the Pennsylvania Department of Education.