It's official. Culver City secondary schools will reopen their classrooms for in-person, hybrid learning beginning next Monday, April 19, district officials announced this week.

In letters to parents, the principals at Culver City High School and Culver City Middle School said they "are excited to bring back to campus students whose parents chose to return for hybrid learning in the recent Culver City Unified School District survey."

Most of these students have been assigned to two groups (Cohort A and Cohort B) and they will be attending school two days a week, school official said. high school seniors "will be invited to return four days a week."

CCHS Principal Lisa Cooper said one group of the 9th graders (Cohort A) will return on April 19 along with the 12th graders who chose hybrid learning. The other group of 9th graders (Cohort B) will be back on Thursday, April 22.

The 10th graders (assigned to be in Cohort A) will return April 26 while the 11th graders (assigned to Cohort B) are slated to come back April 29, Cooper said.

"This will not impact our students who remain in distance learning," she added.

Elsy Villafranca, principal at Culver City Middle School, indicted that students in Cohort A will return to their physical classrooms on April 19 while those in Cohort B will come back on April 22. The middle schoolers will attend school only two days a week.

"We are currently giving teachers the time to prepare for teaching both our students who remain in distance learning and our students who will return in person," she said.

In her letter, Villafranca stated that students who did not complete the CCUSD survey about their return plans have been scheduled for distance only. "If you would like to make a change to your preference, please complete the form found at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdEdmop5uNvAP6YuXl7pGcjv0_8TkURZRmMue5H3-8ikysgMw/viewform," she said "New requests for hybrid learning will be placed on a waitlist. "

The reopening of the middle school and high school comes two weeks after the elementary schools welcomed back transitional kindergarteners through second graders to their campuses, with various safety and health protocols.

This week, Culver City students in third through fifth grades returned to campus for in-person instruction, marking the first time in this current school year that they set foot in their physical classrooms. All the local students – like millions of children nationwide -- had to resort to online learning for the past 13 months due to the pandemic.