The 2020-21 school year began as the previous year ended—during the COVID-19 pandemic. The abrupt interruption in education in the Spring of 2020 left students, parents, and public school divisions doing their best to continue what was left of the school year via remote technologies. With a few summer months to formulate a plan—and with uncertainty still surrounding the pandemic—all public school divisions began the 2020-21 school year with most students in a remote learning environment. However, many divisions later transitioned to a hybrid in-person/remote model. Each school division had their own plan regarding COVID-19 safety and attendance which evolved over the school year and with changes in the pandemic metrics.
In Hampton Roads, 51.9% (124,018) of students attended school remotely all year, while 47.9% of students attended via a hybrid model (114,340). Very few students region-wide (559) attended school in-person the entire school year; these were likely students with special needs.
Below is a table summarizing the percentage of students per mode of instruction by school division. Portsmouth was the only school division where 100% of the students were remote learners for the entire year while Poquoson had the highest number of students attending in a hybrid model at 73%.
School |
Total |
Hybrid % |
Remote % |
In-Person % |
Chesapeake |
39,155 |
59.7% |
40.3% |
0.0% |
Franklin |
966 |
50.1% |
49.9% |
0.0% |
Gloucester County |
4,897 |
66.3% |
33.7% |
0.0% |
Hampton |
18,768 |
33.7% |
66.3% |
0.0% |
Isle of Wight County |
5,308 |
63.8% |
35.4% |
0.8% |
Newport News |
25,770 |
33.3% |
66.6% |
0.1% |
Norfolk |
26,261 |
31.1% |
68.7% |
0.2% |
Poquoson |
2,063 |
72.9% |
27.1% |
0.0% |
Portsmouth |
12,802 |
0.0% |
100.0% |
0.0% |
Southampton County |
2,495 |
44.9% |
55.1% |
0.0% |
Suffolk |
13,378 |
53.6% |
46.3% |
0.1% |
Surry County |
631 |
47.5% |
52.3% |
0.2% |
Virginia Beach |
63,307 |
59.3% |
40.1% |
0.7% |
Williamsburg-James City County |
10,748 |
47.4% |
52.6% |
0.0% |
York County |
12,368 |
65.3% |
34.7% |
0.0% |
PDC staff created a new dashboard for the COVID-19 Hub education page to help summarize the data. To view individual school information, simply zoom in on the map and the detail pane below will update the list of schools that are visible on the map. Or you can click on the school to view a pop-up box.
Mode of instruction and demographic information aggregated by school division are visible with the charts. Changing the selection in the drop-down box in the upper right corner will filter the statistics about the mode of instruction last school year for divisions. Available information includes the number of students learning in each mode by gender and race as well as disabled, economically disadvantaged, and English learner students.
Some graphs are stacked so either click on tabs or arrows under each section to view them all.
Data source: Virginia Department of Education.