Volunteers aren’t allowed back in Wake schools yet. But they can help kids virtually.
Updated June 1 with school board vote
In-person volunteers are still not allowed back in North Carolina public schools, but you’ll soon be able to volunteer virtually to work with Wake County students.
The Wake County school board gave initial approval on Tuesday to revisions to the volunteers policy and to the visitors policy that would allow for virtual volunteering. School leaders say they will bring back in-person volunteering when they’re allowed but they also want to offer this new virtual option.
A final vote is expected June 15.
“We need to leverage our community that wants to be in our schools, and so this is the way we can do it in a virtual space and hopefully we’ll get to the in-person space,” school board member Christine Kushner, chairwoman of the board’s policy committee, said at a recent meeting reviewing the changes.
More than 40,000 people are registered with the Wake County school system to volunteer at schools. But that’s been put on hold since March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The state still requires public schools to “limit nonessential visitors and activities involving external groups or organizations” during the pandemic.
At the May 19 policy committee meeting, Kushner noted how some parents had to gather by a school fence to watch their children on Field Day because they weren’t allowed on campus.
Wake Superintendent Cathy Moore said they’re waiting to hear back from state health officials when visitors and volunteers will be allowed back on campus.
Opening the door for virtual volunteers
Wake’s new virtual volunteering program would allow people to work with either in-person or online students.
For instance, Lloyd Gardner, Wake’s chief of staff, said virtual volunteers could read to students who are on campus.
Virtual volunteers might also work remotely with the 14,000 students who signed up next school year for the district’s Virtual Academy program.
During the pandemic, the community group Activate Good helped Wake distribute computers and hotspots so students could use them while they were learning from home. School officials say the updated policies will allow groups like Activate Good to have more involvement with families.
Gardner said the pandemic opened up a new world of volunteering opportunities that they want to use.
“We’re trying to be very responsive to a need we feel like we have right now to open the door for this to occur within the right parameters and context,” Gardner told the board.
Rules for virtual volunteers
Virtual volunteers will have to submit to the same criminal history background checks as in-person volunteers.
Virtual volunteers would also have to agree to rules such as not audio or video recording any sessions with students or taking screen captures of the children. Volunteers would agree to not meet in-person with their students, or online in a non-volunteering session, without parental permission.
Parents would have to sign a form giving permission for their children to work with a virtual volunteer.
Volunteers would have to watch a training video that would discuss dealing with “worst-case scenarios” such as if a student doesn’t show up or if an outside party breaks in, according to Julie Crain, Wake’s director of policy and strategy.
All the virtual sessions would take place through a district-approved video-conferencing platform such as Google Meet. The sessions might not be supervised or monitored by district staff, Crain said, but they’d be able to double-check that a meeting occurred and the attendees were present.
“It’s another opportunity for someone from out-of-state or from a different physical location to virtually visit and present to our students,” Kushner said. “Maybe we can get more grandmothers and grandfathers and grandparents volunteering in our schools from afar.
“Maybe that’s something we could encourage teachers to look into. We could always use more engagement.”
This story was originally published May 30, 2021 at 9:00 AM with the headline "Volunteers aren’t allowed back in Wake schools yet. But they can help kids virtually.."
