By James Hanlon
Leader Staff Writer
Families will have a limited time frame for students to transfer between in-person and virtual learning for the spring semester at Oxford Schools.
Whether families wish to transfer from an in-person school to Oxford Virtual Academy (OVA) or the other way around, parents must submit transfer requests to the building administration between Nov. 2 and Nov. 13. This will be the only opportunity to switch schools for the rest of the 2020-2021 school year.

“In August, when parents were deciding between in-person learning or OVA, we promised that you would have the opportunity (at the end of the first semester in January) to either transfer back to the seated classrooms or transfer to OVA,” Superintendent Tim Thorne wrote to parents in a district-wide communication earlier this month. “While we are not comfortable going back on this promise, I must be honest with you, we have concerns.”
At the Sept. 29 school board meeting, Throne explained that the amount of work administration put in over the summer to start school this fall they have to do again for the start of the second semester.
“Realistically from a work perspective we are having two starts to the school year this year,” he said. “I cannot tell you the amount of work already that we are putting in for January. We basically have to do a total recount of how many students are coming back, how many students are going, redoing schedules, redoing sections, moving teachers again, it’s two starts to the same school year.”
In a short period of time at the end of the summer the schools added the equivalent of the entire OHS population to OVA, where they are still hiring new staff to accommodate the increase in students. Throne said they are “anxious about once again moving large numbers of students in either direction.”
Besides the extra administrative work, they are concerned about large numbers of students transferring back to in-person because of social distancing issues.
“A significant movement of students may cause the return of 50/50 attendance days at the secondary level,” Throne wrote in the communication. “This will allow us to maintain our mitigation protocols that have worked so successfully since the start of school.”
Throne said they are looking at all viable solutions, but the course of action will ultimately depend on the number of students that transfer.

Schools of Choice closed for spring
At the recommendation of Supt. Throne, the school board also decided close Schools of Choice enrollment for the spring semester. (Schools of Choice allows students who do not live within the district boundaries to apply for enrollment.)
Oxford has historically been open to Schools of Choice for the spring semester. However, not many new students typically apply, according to Denise Sweat, Assistant Superintendent of Student Services.
The school board previously cut short the Schools of Choice enrollment deadline for the fall semester in August when the state legislature passed a bill changing the per-pupil funding structure to be based 75 percent on last school year’s enrollment and only 25 percent on this year’s. That legislation has been modified somewhat since then, but there is still uncertainty about how much Oxford Schools will receive.
Based on the funding and the concerns about getting swamped with transfers, Throne recommended they close Schools of Choice. “We can’t afford one more variable in our situation,” he said. “It’s just too much. It’s not that we don’t want to offer that choice, it’s just that at some point we have to say this is the best we can do and we got to just go with what we got.”
Board Trustee Dan D’Alessandro emphasized the importance of looking at it from a health, rather than funding perspective and expressed concerns about bringing more outside students into the buildings.