My nephew Garrison had a hideous experience with distance learning that he and endless other students were forced into last semester due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

He’s a business major at Chico State. It was bad enough tech support appeared to be woefully inadequate and often missing in action, but his business professor was a duck out of water. The few times the class successfully met on line the students paying $3,934 a semester were treated to a videotaped lecture. It was a nice touch for a university that brags how it is preparing students to succeed in the 21st century business world.

Contrast that with an acquaintance’s daughter who was a sophomore last semester at Sierra High. She gave two instructors high marks for their online efforts and believes she learned just as much as she did in the classroom. However, she said she misses the high school experience and in-person interaction with teachers.

As of Tuesday one out of every 12 of the 24,000 students in the Manteca Unified School District had signed up for priority registration for the district’s new 100 percent online charter school academy. It’s been more than a year in the making and has been crafted by MUSD educators who will teach the online classes as well as periodically have one-on-one in person meetings with students. This is not — by the way — the same as distance learning Manteca Unified has been forced to switch students to if COVID-19 conditions dictate such a move.

Keep in mind this is not your “typical” exodus to an online charter school where parents contend they are anxious to get their children away from traditional public schools. That’s because they are going with a known quantity — local teachers and a local school system.

It is likely some parents opting for the new online academy are seeking stability during the pandemic that has thrown all facets of life from school and work to shopping and recreation into a chaotic state. Historically societies have had to reach certain comfort levels with infection and death rates along with health protocols and/or vaccines before pandemics “end”. The flux we are in could last to some degree for another one to three years.

By then the community schools serve will be much different driven by more flexible work schedules and childcare dynamics that are highly unlikely going to disappear.

The grip of the agrarian calendar and the 8 to 5 workplace mentality will be eroded significantly more due to the challenges of coping with COVID-19.

The concept of an extended break from school in the form of summer vacation was firmly rooted in the need at one point for youthful labor to work farms at peak growing and harvesting times.

The 8 to 5 work and shopping world is moving 24/7 primarily driven by technology that allows an online market and workplace. Much like Southland Corporation shocked the world in 1946 by opening their stores at the then ungodly hour of 7 a.m. and staying open to the unheard of hour of 11 p.m. as the first step toward the store named after their then unique operating hours being open 24 hours, our response to COVID-19 is creating a paradigm shift that will include public schools.

You might hope that once the pandemic becomes history that public schools will go back to the basic model of education that has persisted for over a century with 30 or so desks filled with students from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday facing a teacher in a 900-square-foot room.

But that is wishful thinking.

Family life and the demands of workplaces will reshape public schools just like they did back in the late 18th century when four-fifths of the nation’s population lived on farms or in rural area.

The process should have been much farther along years ago but a lot of powerful ingrained institutions from government bureaucracies to teacher unions essentially weren’t responding to the times or the capabilities of rapidly changing technology to blow up the 900-square-foot boxes we call classrooms. The national emergency that is COVID-19 is the game changer.

If you forget about the coronavirus for a minute and examine the hybrid learning model known as “Plan B” the Manteca Unified School District Board unanimously embraced as the preferred model to return to school on Aug. 6 — at least until the state interceded — you might just be looking at the future.

As crafted by educators, it has students in a traditional classroom setting five out of every 10 school days at a much more desirable ratio of 1 teacher to every 17 students. The other five days they are at home and online working on assignments they receive from more intense one-on-one interactions with teachers.

Once they don’t have COVID-19 to worry about schools would be able to work with community partners and even possibly create on-campus learning resource centers for those students who are working outside the classroom five days a week and may lack proper supervision at home.

Such a model doesn’t eliminate extracurricular activities such as sports, JROTC, FFA and such but would actually allow such offerings to be enhanced or expanded.

It also opens the door for enrichment programs that build upon classroom teaching and could take place on campus or in the community to create classrooms without walls.

The clearest sign that schools are behind the curve are the 2,000 students whose parents have signed them up for the new Manteca Unified online academy.

According to the California Department of Education last school year there were 6,163,003 students in traditional public schools and 675,374 students enrolled in public charter schools. That is just under 10 percent of all public school students being in charter schools that purposely designed to be different than public schools in varying degrees when it comes to teaching techniques and/or delivery of an education.

Experts indicate that in any given district 9 to 12 percent or so of the school-age children are in charter schools, online schools, parochial schools, or private schools. Taking a middle number that means upwards of 2,400 students that would have gone to Manteca Unified schools are instead attending St. Anthony’s, Great Valley, River Islands, Delta Charter and a host of other charter and parochial schools.

That 2,000 number reflects a group of current district students and parents that do not believe the format of education Manteca Unified is offering on their campuses is meeting their needs. Given the fact they want an online school that is Manteca Unified grown means their desire to eschew “going back to school” in the traditional format and schedule is not an indictment of the quality of a Manteca Unified education and its teachers. It is the opposite.

What it does mean is a 12th of students aren’t being adequately served by Manteca Unified when it comes to the format in which they are being educated.

It is clearly time for a chance in how we deliver the educational experience.

And the answer might just be “Plan B” as adopted by the school board in a bid to safety maximum student-teacher interaction while dealing the new realities of family life and the workplace brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.