Greenville County Schools – 1 in 5 Students Received an F in Q12020

To say that the Covid lockdowns have been devastating to students is an understatement. Greenville County Schools has run both a fully virtual track along with in person classroom time part-time during Q1 2020. This was set up of course to try to minimize the spread of Covid. The question becomes…at what cost? Have we yet again sacrificed our children for elusive protection and health and wellness of the adults?

According to the Greenville News article, Greenville County Schools just reported that in Q1 2019, 5,300 students had at least one F on their report card. Now for Q1 2020 they are reporting that the number of students failing at least one class has tripled to 16,047. Greenville County is a massive school district responsible for the education of 75,000 students. 21% of students have at least one F. Wow!

Those who are full time virtual are bearing the brunt of the failed courses. According to the Greenville News story, “of the students with a failing grade in at least one class, 7,481 are full-time virtual students and 8,566 are students who have attended classes in schools part-time since the district has used a hybrid schedule because of the coronavirus pandemic.” I haven’t seen the numbers of full time virtual students…I think the last number I saw was about 15,000 but I could be off.

Parents and students have been clamoring to get back to school 5 days per week. Given that we seem to know so much more about how to deal with Covid, isn’t it time we open up our schools. For the sake of our children, we need to do this now.