Dear Wake County Public School System:

Your mission is to educate our children. During this Coronavirus pandemic, remote learning on *new* material for our high schoolers must start immediately for our students to continue to be engaged, for them to be educated for the future, and for them to continue on their current academic track.

This event is an unprecedented event that needs to be managed with creativity and innovation. Many companies, households, and other institutions are quickly adapting to this crisis, and the public education system needs to do the same. This pandemic is not going to end in 1.5 weeks. It might go on for 8 weeks or 20 weeks, as you've even alluded to on social media.

We need to separate educational decisions based on whether students are in elementary school, middle school, or high school. High school teachers should be able to continue to teach classes using remote learning. AP classes must continue immediately so that our students can be prepared for their exams. The College Board has said that they are planning to offer an "at home" test in May for all of the AP Exams.

There are plenty of online tools for the teachers to use to continue to teach new material going forward and most (if not all) of their content was online already. Khan Academy has already put out an entire curriculum for all grade levels. Even WCPSS has the infrastructure in place via the current online learning virtual classroom (NCVPS). We need to use this existing virtual set up and roll it out immediately to all teachers and students. Chapel Hill-Carrboro plans to move up spring break and use a week of online learning. Orange County will hold online classes for two weeks while leaving spring break unchanged. Wake County should do the same. Georgia is already teaching all Fulton county students via online learning.

In closing, rolling out online learning to reinforce previous learning is NOT enough. The goal of remote education will be to continue to educate our students so they can finish out their grade shortly after June 13.

For those that are less fortunate and don’t have Internet access, the schools have plenty of computers to check out to students and the cable companies have offered free Internet. Alternatively, materials can be printed out and given to those students. Our community is ready to help you with this initiative. In addition, we can print out and mail the necessary materials for those who don't have reliable internet access.

Please let our community and our businesses help you. It's imperative for the Wake County schools to continue their primary mission which is to educate our children. Parents are ready and willing to help at home and wherever necessary,

Signed,

WCPSS High School Students and Parents