Schools

While UNC has already begun its spring semester and decided on a delayed start for in-person classes, some professors and students are calling for the university to do more.

Students in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools won’t see a return to any form of in-person instruction until at least March. The city school board decided at its meeting this week not to shift to hybrid instruction in January due to worsening COVID-19 metrics as well as opposition from teachers and parents,

A longtime Virginia educator will be the next superintendent of Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools. The city school board has unanimously selected Nyah Hamlett, currently the chief of staff for Loudoun County Public Schools, to lead the district beginning Jan. 1.

Sabrina Zirkle walks through a quiet and barren university campus, reminded of the energetic commotion that once was. Its emptiness overwhelms her. She writes down her feelings, for that has given her clarity in the past.

UNC will have students back on campus, but only in single dorm rooms for the spring semester, campus officials say.

UNC-Chapel Hill is facing significant financial losses amid the coronavirus pandemic — losses that could lead to potential furloughs and departmental budget cuts — but data show the school’s financial problems were present long before that.

There may at least be one silver lining to the COVID-19 pandemic. Partially because of a pandemic-forced switch to remote learning and also through concentrated efforts by high school principals and staff, the graduation rate for Black students in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools jumped nearly 10 percent during the last school year.

Before introducing the final discussion topic at the July 23 Chapel-Hill Carrboro school board meeting, Assistant Superintendent Patrick Abele felt moved to issue a warning.

As the sun stepped over the horizon on the first day of class Monday at UNC, senior Jessie LaMasse, wearing a sky-blue shirt, emblazened “CAROLINA” and a mask, pedaled her bicycle to the back-lit Old Well before 6:30 a.m.

It’s going to be even longer before local schoolkids get to enter their classrooms. Because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Board of Education has voted unanimously to keep all learning online at least until Jan. 15, 2021.

The UNC Board of Trustees has voted to lift its freeze on renaming buildings, monuments and memorials that are associated with racism and white supremacy “to help our campus heal and move forward with a mission to learn from our past,” said Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz and trustee Chair Richard Stevens in a statement.

What to do about the potential widening of the achievement gap between black students and white students due to the coronavirus pandemic? The Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP has an idea.