CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Students and teachers in some Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools are back in the classroom. Elementary school students are some of the first to return to in-person learning.

Heading back to the classroom was marked with some controversy after months of back-and-forth between the CMS Board of Education, teachers, and parents.

CMS says they are confident they can safely return to schools, but some teachers say they wanted to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 before they went back to the clasrroom.

The Harris family is full of generations of teachers. They all agree they miss face-to-face interactions with students, but they’re still concerned for their safety.

Jade Harris teaches at Hawthorn Academy, and she says everyone has to do their part to make sure schools can stay open.

"This is a virus. It doesn't have any kind of boundaries, doesn't care who you are,” she says. “Just making sure that the students know that they have to wear those masks, they have to keep those masks on. They're going to have to wash their hands, they're going to have to make sure that they're spacing themselves, and they're going to have to take on responsibility as well."

Middle and high school students in CMS return to the classroom on February 22. Under Governor Roy Cooper’s new guidelines, teachers under the age of 65 can start receiving their COVID-19 vaccine on February 24.