Parents And Students Protest Decision To Move To Distance Learning

Organizers stood outside the Fargo Public School Office opposed to the district's decision to move to distance learning

FARGO, ND – Signs of disappointment, frustration, and desperation. That was the attitude outside the Fargo Public Schools office.

“I’m trying to get us to go back to school, whether it be in person or hybrid,” said Fargo North senior Ellie Liedburg. “As long as we get the chance for a small amount of time during the week to get back into schools.”

A week ago, the Fargo Public Schools COVID-19 Instructional Committee announced that middle and high schools would shift to distance learning only on October 5th and run through the 19th, moving away from the hybrid model that had been in place up to this point. the decision, though, hasn’t gotten a stamp of approval from everyone.

We as parents don’t feel this is the best decision for our students and at the time we only had 35 positive cases in our school system that has over 11,000 kids and to us that’s just such a small percentage,” said event organizer Dawn Hager.

“What I don’t like is that it gets lonely when your parents are at work,” said Trenton Nephew, a 6th grader at Carl Ben Eielson Middle School.

“I have government and econ and then anatomy and physiology and those are not easy classes that you can’t just look at a paragraph and learn it,” said Liedburg.

As Coronavirus cases have been on the rise, some believe no in-person learning isn’t the answer.

“Maybe just a different approach rather than sending these middle and high schoolers home full time,” said parent Alissa Motschenbacher.

“We’ve been distancing perfectly fine in school. We have arrows on the ground, we’re told where to go,” said Liedburg. “We sanitize all the time. There are many different stations. We always have our masks on. Most of the kids leave them on until they get to their car. We have no problem doing that.”

As of now, it’s the only organized gathering against decision, but one they hope can lead to having students back in the classroom.