by Nyamekye Daniel, The Center Square | March 11, 2021 05:00 PM Print this article
After reaching an agreement with Gov. Roy Cooper, the North Carolina Senate unanimously approved a bill Wednesday to fully reopen North Carolina schools for the rest of the 2020-21 school year.
Senate Bill 220 would require all K-5 public schools to reopen with minimal social distancing, referred to as Plan A in the state s guidance. It would give high schools and middle schools the option to chose between Plan A or Plan B, which requires full social distancing.
Sixth-grade to 12th-grade classrooms with students with special needs would be required to operate under Plan A if the measure becomes law.
North Carolina s Year in the Global Coronavirus Pandemic
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NC bill to return more students to classrooms becomes law
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North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper appears at a Feb. 2, 2021, press conference in Raleigh where he joined the state s superintendent to call for public school districts to offer in-person classes.
In the standoff over how to reopen schools, Gov. Roy Cooper and Democrats had two main objections to the GOP’s earlier proposal in Senate Bill 37.
The first was that the governor couldn’t close schools in case of a spike in coronavirus cases.
The second was that middle and high schools would be allowed to open under Plan A, with minimal social distancing. Because of the level of community spread in North Carolina, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said almost all middle and high schools should be virtual unless they could keep students 6 feet apart.