As vaccines become more readily available and as COVID-19 cases continue to go down, John Carroll is beginning to take bigger steps in the direction of opening the building for more students.

On Wednesday, February 17, JC President Steve DiBiagio, in an email sent to the school community, wrote, “Based on the success of our hybrid instruction model to date, we are able to further expand opportunities for students to be on campus in March.”
The new schedule, which will begin on Monday, will see two full grade levels in the building each week with members of other grades coming in one day per week. This will allow students to be in the classrooms for additional days in a month.
Fridays will continue to be asynchronous days where students and teachers will not have live classes.
In late January, the John Carroll administration made the decision to allow students to attend school at a 50% capacity, two times a week.
Before JC made the decision to allow more students to attend in-person schooling, most students were only allowed to be in the building for classes once a week at a 25% capacity rate.
When students were able to attend school more often with more people, many students were overjoyed. Many could not wait to have another element of normalcy implemented into their lives after the pandemic seemingly took so much away.
Two weeks into the 50% hybrid schedule, The Patriot sent out a survey to the student body. 93 students responded.
Results show that the majority of students tend to feel happy and safe with the current learning situation; however, some feel that more precautions could be taken.
While about half of the students indicated that John Carroll is taking proper safety precautions to keep all students from contracting COVID-19, some feel that improvements could be made.
Junior Caitlyn McLauchlin said, “I feel like mask enforcement is a big issue. When I’m in the halls, it makes me feel very unsafe and uncomfortable to be around people with their masks under their noses or not wearing their masks correctly.”
Sophomore Reagan McComas commented, “I think that John Carroll is doing a great job with in-person learning, but we could definitely add a few more guidelines to make sure we are still maintaining distance between classes and after lunch mods.”
Students were also asked if they preferred to attend school at 50% capacity twice a week, at 25% capacity once a week, or if they preferred to learn virtually.
Senior Delaney Hopkins feels as though JC has the means to allow more students to attend school at this rate and commented, “Bring us back 100%. With the precautions currently in place, the rate of transmission of COVID-19 should be very low. Those students who do not feel comfortable in a 100% attendance school day can simply stay at home, like many others have already been doing. In addition, online learning has been detrimental to most students’ mental health. By bringing students back to school full time, John Carroll can be the lively and fun John Carroll that it used to be.”
When it comes to in-person schooling, many students seem to want to rush back into normalcy as soon as possible. More detailed survey results are listed in the box below.