FORSYTH COUNTY, N.C. — Winston-Salem/ Forsyth County school kids and teachers will head back into the classroom next week, but this time around there will be some changes.
WFMY News 2 spoke with WS/FCS Superintendent, Tricia McManus to discuss the 2024-2025 school year.
For starters, school begins on Monday, August 12th. Kids and staff are starting earlier than normal this year by about two weeks. McManus explained with an earlier start, its able to wrap up the first semester by winter break.
The school system is working with students and teachers who had preplanned vacations for attendance purposes.
"We basically said obviously we're going to excuse students for that time and once they start is really when their enrollment, their school year starts. So, we have plans for any kind of makeup, allowing makeup work, or doing orientations late to accommodate some of those schedules," said McManus.
Changes are also coming to school security. According to McManus, random metal detecting is ramping up at middle and high schools. Additionally, the school system is trying out a new metal detection system at eight schools with hopes it will be faster and more accurate.
"Schools are no place for weapons, for knives, sometimes kids forget they've got a pocketknife, they were doing something on the weekend, and they had a pocketknife. We've had butter knifes for lunch. All of those are considered weapons, even if it's not intended to be used as a weapon. So, at the end of the day, school is not a place to bring any type of weapon," McManus warned.
Additionally, students can expect to use school laptops less often for learning purposes.
"What we've seen in the past two years is a little bit of an over reliance in classrooms on the Chromebook. So, what we're trying to do is back away from that. Our students have given us this feedback, our teachers have given us this feedback. It's like you don't need the Chromebook, let's go back to a lesson that is hands on, engaging," explained McManus.
Finally, a new cell phone policy is in place. In short, starting this year, students are not allowed to use cell phones during the school day. The new policy states during that time, phones must be powered off and out of sight. There is an exception for high school students. They can have their phones during lunch.
"If there is a 'hey I need you to go pick up your sibling today' that could happen with a checkpoint at lunch time. Outside of that we should not see them out at all, during passing periods, during the school day. Middle schools not at all, elementary school not at all. So, we are going to be enforcing this procedure and we do believe our kids will thank us for this, they may not at first, but they will thank us as the school year proceeds," explained McManus.