On January 19, we went back to school full-time, five days a week. With this drastic change, we urge the Fargo Public Schools to return to the original hybrid system for multiple reasons. 

First, COVID-19 cases will like rise. The reason why we have such low cases in the first place is because the school populations were split in half, as well as some students who were doing virtual who weren’t at school. Hybrid allows for proper social distancing whereas the full-time and in-person learning models doesn’t.

Classrooms are packed and that increases the chances of students contracting the virus.

Another reason cases will rise is the new mutation. According to USA Today on January 22, the new variant with a higher infectious rate called B.1.1.7 originated in the United Kingdom and has appeared in the U.S. With its high infectious rate, more people will get it, thus more deaths will occur as explained by Dr. Anthony Fauci. Therefore, schools should not subject students to full-time.

Next, community opposition. As of January 22, a change.org petition to urge Fargo Public Schools to remain in hybrid mode has over 1,900 signatures. If the FPS is meant to serve the people, it should listen to the people.

FPS should especially listen to the students. The Scroll, the student-newspaper at North High School, reported that a stats class survey asking students’ opinions about going back the school. The survey yielded 406 responses. Out of those responses, about 67 percent of students want to continue with the hybrid model.

Students are not used to going to school five days a week since we have not gone that many days for almost a year. If we are going back, we could at least start off with three days and then slowly phase into four and then five days a week, at least until everyone is used to going five days a week again. This way we can be able to track the number of COVID-19 cases as we go more and more days in a single week.

Just as of January 13, there were already 138 new cases and if all of Fargo and West Fargo Schools go back full time that number is going to go up again. We don’t want to go into a full quarantine again for another 6+ months.

In the meantime, we strongly disagree with having to go back to school fulltime right away.