Kalamazoo parents continue fight for in-person schooling

Kalamazoo Public Schools will continue to hold classes remotely for the rest of the 2020-21 school year. The district made the announcement about two weeks ago and reinforced it by a vote of the school board last week.

However, parent groups opposed to the decision aren’t mollified and are continuing their campaign to get the district to backtrack.

The parents have organized on Facebook and even set up a GoFundMe page to raise money to hire a lawyer.

Brian Montgomery is the parent of two KPS elementary school students.

“I don’t care what the parents think or the teachers, we must return to school,” he said in an interview with MLive. “The science dictates it.”

KPS is one of the only major school districts in the state that will not return to in-person classes at all this year. Other holdouts such as Lansing and Ann Arbor have announced plans to return to the classes room in the coming months.

KPS Superintendent Rita Raichoudhuri said she understands parents’ concerns, but that the district’s other option – with students attending classes in person two days per week – would have been worse.

“That would have reduced the number of in-person days to the mid to low teens, while destabilizing learning routines and leaving families scrambling to secure childcare at the last minute,” she said.

You can read more on MLive.