Updated on March 1, 2021 at 5:40 pm NBC Universal, Inc. A few thousand Philadelphia public school students in kindergarten and first and second grades will return to in-person learning, starting Monday, March 8, city and school officials said today. Superintendent William Hite Jr. described the initial return as the beginning of a way to "slowly phase in" in-person learning. Download our mobile app for iOS to get alerts for local breaking news and weather. The in-person learning will be a hybrid model and will reopen classrooms for a portion of the school week at 53 city schools. Hite said the exact number of students returning March 8 is based on which students at the 53 schools signed up to be the first to return. He estimated it would be about 3,000.