UPDATE: Only 36% of Henrico students plan to return to school in person

Whenever in-person learning resumes in Henrico County’s public schools – January, February or beyond – only about 36% of the school system’s 49,408 students intend to show up.

The rest will continue learning virtually, according to the results of student intent surveys completed earlier this month by Henrico families and provided to the Citizen Wednesday by a school system official at the publication’s request.

With the decisions of about 2,700 students still unaccounted for, the data showed that 41.5% of elementary school students (or about 9,200) would return, while about 36% of middle school students (or about 4,250) and only 28.8% of high school students (or about 4,500) would.

The in-person numbers generally were higher among West End schools and lowest among schools in Eastern Henrico, with a few notable exceptions.

The surveys were due Nov. 8, in preparation for what was to have been a four-phased approach return to in-person learning for those who chose it, beginning Nov. 30 for pre-kindergarten through second-grade students and Dec. 7 for third, fourth and fifth-graders.

But Monday, Henrico Superintendent Amy Cashwell opted to delay those return dates until Jan. 11 and Jan. 14 at the earliest, because of rapidly rising COVID-19 numbers in the county. The in-person return for middle and high-school students who chose it wasn’t scheduled to begin until early February, so it was not impacted by her decision.

The survey results showed that the desire to return in person was most evident in one specific elementary-to-middle-to-high feeder pattern in the Near West End.

At 82%, Tuckahoe Elementary was the only Henrico school with an in-person return rate above 58%. Similarly, only one middle school – Tuckahoe Middle at 58% (to which Tuckahoe Elementary feeds) – had an in-person return rate above 47%. And only one high school – Freeman High at 47% (to which a majority of Tuckahoe Middle feeds) – had such a rate above 32%.

At 11 other elementary schools, the families of between 50% and 58% of students indicated that they would return in person. At 12 others, fewer than one-third of students will be back in person.

The in-person return rates at all but three middle schools (Tuckahoe, Pocahontas and Hungary Creek) were between 21% and 38%.

And the in-person return rates at the county’s eight other high schools ranged from 17% (Highland Springs High) to 32% (Godwin High), though nearly 600 students at Highland Springs hadn’t yet responded as of Nov. 13.

In total, the school system had received responses from all but 150 of its 22,119 elementary school students and all but 470 of its 11,738 middle school students. But it was still missing responses from nearly 2,100 high school students, according to the data.

At the same time families were completing their intent surveys, Henrico Schools employees also were completing their own. Their choices amounted to returning to work in-person, requesting accommodations to continue working virtually, requesting some form of discretionary leave time, resigning or retiring.

The exact results of the staff survey are not clear, but HCPS spokesman Andy Jenks told the Citizen Wednesday that since August, 508 employees had requested accommodations (and 301 had been granted, as of Nov. 13), while 22 others had requested discretionary leave, 76 had resigned and 16 had retired. Some of those requests or decisions were unrelated to the pandemic, Jenks said. The school system employs more than 7,100 people.

Return rates largely reflect racial composition of schools
The in-person return rates seemed generally to reflect the racial composition of individual schools in a number of instances, though not in every case. Generally, schools with higher percentages of white students were most likely to have higher in-person return rates, while those with the highest populations of Asian and Black students were most likely to have the lowest such rates.

For example, the three elementary schools with the lowest in-person percentages – Rivers Edge (21.5%), Twin Hickory (21.7%) and Colonial Trail (22%) in the Far West End – also are the only three schools in the county at which Asian students represent a majority (between 55% and 65%).

Conversely, three of the four elementary schools with the highest percentages of white students – Tuckahoe (92% white), Pemberton (75%) and Nuckols Farm (73%) – were among the six elementaries with the highest in-person return rates.

Among middle schools, the two with the highest percentages of white students (Tuckahoe and Pocahontas) also had the two highest in-person return rates. The two with the lowest percentages of white students (Rolfe and Fairfield, each with less than 10%) were among the three with the lowest in-person return rates.

The same was the case at the high school level, where the two schools with the highest percentage of white students (Freeman and Godwin) also were the top two among in-person return rates, while the two schools with the lowest percentages of whites (Henrico and Highland Springs) had the two lowest such rates. The latter two also have the highest percentages of Black students at the high school level.

But at Glen Lea Elementary in Eastern Henrico – which has the third-highest percentage of Black students in the county (92%) – more than 41% of students indicated that they would return in person.

Schools with the largest Hispanic populations tended to rank higher on the in-person return list. At the elementary school level, Johnson, Holladay and Dumbarton (each with Hispanic populations between 35%-49%) each were among the top 13 in-person percentages at the elementary school level.

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