A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
AN ACT to provide In‑Person Learning for students in Asheboro City Schools, Carteret County Schools, Haywood county schools, randolph county schools, and yancey county schools.
Whereas, the CDC further found that with mitigation efforts, the COVID‑19 transmission risk in schools appears low, showing that with the necessary precautions in place, schools can open during the pandemic and that there is little evidence that schools have contributed meaningfully to increased community transmission; and
Whereas, the ABC Science Collaborative confirms the CDC's findings, as it reported that no instances of child‑to‑adult transmission of COVID‑19 were reported within schools during their examination of 11 open school districts in North Carolina serving 90,000 students during the first quarter of the 2020‑2021 school year; and
Whereas, the American Academy of Pediatrics strongly advocates that all policy considerations for school COVID‑19 plans should start with a goal of having students physically present in school; and
Whereas, the World Health Organization, in its school reopening guidance, recommends that a physical distance be maintained of at least 1 meter (3.28 feet) between individuals where feasible; and
Whereas, high failure rates in remote learning classes among middle and high school students are being reported statewide; and
Whereas, the Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development found for every one‑third of a school year lost, current students will suffer a 3% loss in income across their entire careers; and
Whereas, a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that today's students' increased financial stress could be associated with a collective loss of 13.8 million years of life; and
Whereas, even last summer, experts at Harvard University warned that school closures are a disaster that some students may never recover from; Now, therefore,
The General Assembly of North Carolina enacts:
SECTION 1.  Notwithstanding Article 1A of Chapter 166A of the General Statutes, any executive order, secretarial order or directive, or any county or city ordinance authorized pursuant to Article 1A of Chapter 166A of the General Statutes, or any other provision of law, local school administrative units shall have the option to provide in‑person instruction to students enrolled in grades kindergarten through 12 in accordance with this act for the remainder of the scheduled 2020‑2021 school year.
SECTION 2.  Local boards of education shall provide in‑person instruction to all students under Plan A (Minimal Social Distancing). Schools shall follow the requirements for implementation of Plan A provided in the StrongSchoolsNC Public Health Toolkit (K‑12), as that guidance existed on February 2, 2021, and are encouraged to require at least 3.5 feet of social distancing when possible for all students. Local boards of education shall continue to provide remote instruction options for students to participate in, at the discretion of the parent or guardian, for the remainder of the 2020‑2021 school year.
SECTION 3.  Local boards of education, following consultation with the local health director and local school superintendent, shall have the authority to make day‑to‑day decisions concerning whether shifting individual schools or individual classrooms that are providing in‑person instruction to remote instruction is necessary due to COVID‑19 exposures that result in insufficient school personnel or required student quarantines. A local board of education shall report any shift by a school or classroom from in‑person to remote instruction to the Department of Public Instruction within 72 hours of the shift.
SECTION 4.  For the purposes of this act, in‑person instruction includes all of the following components:
(1)	Is offered to the student in person by a teacher of record on a local school administrative unit campus. Continued enrollment in a North Carolina Virtual Public School course or other e‑learning course offering or use of prerecorded learning materials integrated in instruction that occurs on a local school administrative unit campus shall be considered to meet this requirement.
(2)	Lunch service.
(3)	Transportation services to the campus where the student is assigned.
SECTION 5.  This act applies only to the Asheboro City Schools, Carteret County Schools, Haywood County Schools, Randolph County Schools, and Yancey County Schools.
SECTION 6.  This act is effective when it becomes law.