Killian O’Brian, Gilpin County. Not everyone agreed with Gilpin County Schools decision to do online school for the 2020/2021 school year. Due to COVID-19, schools have to take many precautions if they decide to do in person learning. Gilpin has only been doing online and remote learning up to this point but decided to reevaluate, so they put up polls asking what the parents thoughts were.

From the results, the facility learned that 66% of parents wanted to send their children back to the in-person learning program Monday-Thursday, 70% of parents would send their children to school one day a week, and 29% of parents want to continue with online only for the 2020/2021 school year. The school board considered this as well as the fact that 36% of parents depend on the school for the supervision of their children during the day. The school board took all of this into consideration and has given many options so that everyone is happy.

Parents can choose to send their kids to in-person learning for one-four days a week or just continue with the four day a week online-learning. The school also offers the remote Colorado Digital learning solutions and Edmentum programs for students who don’t want to do online in-person learning.

(Originally published in the September 17, 2020, edition of The Mountain-Ear.)