VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. — Volusia County Schools officials say students in the Volusia Live online learning program will have to return to the physical classroom if they score a D or F in any class this quarter.

Kelly Schulz, public information officer for Volusia County Schools, said she let parents know about the requirement via email this week. 

School officials are unsure how many children would be added to physical classrooms under the requirement, but Schulz said 67 percent of Volusia Live middle school students and 65 percent of the program's high school students currently carry at least one D or F.

That means thousands of the 16,062 currently enrolled Volusia Live students could be returning to brick-and-mortar schools, she said.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, Volusia Live students learn online from home and follow the same daily class schedule as classmates in traditional classrooms, district officials said. The district also offers a less-used online option called Volusia Online Learning that lets students work at their own pace. 

“As we approach the end of the first quarter, Volusia Live students who are not demonstrating adequate progress (below a “C”) will be contacted and must return to face-to-face (brick and mortar) instruction,” Schulz wrote in the email to parents, which she shared with Spectrum News 13. 

“A student with just one D or F in a class would fall into this category," she said in a later email to Spectrum News. 

In her email to parents, Schulz added: “Any other Volusia Live student who wishes to transition to face-to-face (brick and mortar) instruction is encouraged to do so at this time.”

The Volusia district’s requirement comes amid lawsuits and concern from teachers’s unions and other groups about the safety of students, teachers, and others during the pandemic throughout Florida. Representatives of the Volusia United Educators teachers’s union didn’t return a phone call seeking comment.

During the summer, Gov. Ron DeSantis required all schools to offer in-person instruction by the end of August. As school districts opened, schools offered parents a choice of attending school or learning online from home.

Volusia County Schools’s COVID-19 Data Dashboard, updated Wednesday, showed 21 positive cases in the district — eight students and 13 employees — from Friday through Tuesday.

“We are and will continue to adhere to CDC guidelines,” Schulz told Spectrum News 13 in an email, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We require masks on campus when social distancing is not possible.”

Asked why the new requirement applies to Volusia Live but not to Volusia Online Learning, Schulz said Volusia Online Learning students, “could do all their work at once or wait until the last minute. Grades aren’t tallied in the same way/time frame.”

In addition to the Volusia Live students, Volusia Schools has 36,885 students attending physical school and 7,667 participating via flexible online learning, she said.

“As with anything,” Schulz told Spectrum News 13, “we will work with families to help with whatever is best for the student.”