Las Cruces Public Schools look to improve upon virtual learning efforts

LAS CRUCES, New Mexico -- With virtual learning being thrust upon students of all ages in Las Cruces, the future of learning will be influenced by those that have experienced the emergency changes of the pandemic.

Las Cruces Public School's Josh Silver told ABC-7 that the district has utilized gathered information from families that aided in the online learning process.

"A lot of them are telling us that remote learning had great benefits for their kids. Absolutely, that is not everybody in our community, but we knew coming out with the spring remote learning that there was a group of students that it did serve well," Silver said.

After seeing what was successful for the Las Cruces schools, the district also realized improvements could be made.

"We needed to streamline where students were getting essentially their material from. We had lots of places where teachers could place those things. It just became overwhelming especially for families that have more than one student," he said.

One teacher reflected on the frustration she has had with the technological barriers her student's families faced saying,  "Some of the parents didn't even know how to turn on the computer, and then we are expecting for them to log on and interact?"

Teacher Angela Silguero relayed what the children of Las Cruces had missed last school semester for her first grade students: "The social emotional skills are very important in these years. They're learning how to share, they are learning how to communicate with one another. They are learning so much and we basically took that away from them. "