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Grading for most Del Norte students will resume Monday, though parents and even teachers are still struggling to wrap their heads around learning during COVID-19.

Teachers are connecting with their students via Zoom, Google Classroom, SeeSaw and Canvas. But Del Norte Unified School District Superintendent Jeff Harris said their goal is to provide high-quality educational opportunities, not instruction.

“This isn’t teaching as normal,” Harris said, referring to California Governor Gavin Newsom’s March 13 executive order stating that districts must offer distance learning and independent study opportunities to its students to continue to receive state funding.

“If you listen to Governor Newsom, what he said (is), ‘Parents, you need to be prepared to homeschool your children.’ This is about homeschooling not about instructional models that we’ve all used since 1923.”

The DNUSD Board of Trustees on Thursday unanimously approved a resolution governing grading during emergency school closures. However, Harris said he would have to bring a distance learning policy as proposed by the California School Boards Association back to trustees at its May 7 meeting.

Though children will be graded starting Monday, things are still changing, especially when it comes to high school students meeting standards set by the University of California and California State University systems, Harris said.

“Tuesday we were told that the UC (and) CSUs were only going to be looking at pass/fails,” he told trustees. “Giving a grade could disqualify students from entering college, negatively impact them moving forward and could also have some unforeseen circumstances with CIF. We’re having discussions with staff about what that means and how we can still utilize grades for purposes (of determining) valedictorian and those kinds of pieces.”

Noting that the week starting Monday was a “bridge to distance learning week,” Tom Kissinger, assistant superintendent of instructional services, gave a presentation on what grading will look like through the rest of the school year. With the guiding principal being “do no harm,” elementary and middle school students won’t receive a letter grade, Kissinger said.

Teachers will be required to check to make sure students are participating and engaged. They will keep track of student contact via Zoom, phone and email. Feedback will be based on whether the student completed the work showing they were able to do the task required, demonstrated that they were progressing in their work or were missing or had not submitted their work.

At the high school level, grades will be on an A through D scale, Kissinger said. Some courses will require students to receive a C or better in a pre-requisite in order to advance, he said.

According to Del Norte High School Principal Randy Fugate, if a student was passing his or her class prior to the March 15 Board of Trustees decision to shutter campuses, he or she could improve their grade by re-engaging with their instructor. If a passing student did not begin participating in his or her class, their grade could decrease, but they would not get anything lower than a D, Fugate said.

However, that could be problematic for students moving onto a CSU or UC after graduating, Fugate said. The two public college systems had initially indicated grades wouldn’t matter coming into the fall semester, he said. But, Fugate said, a high school senior who receives a D in a class instead of a pass/fail designation could be in danger of not being admitted to a UC or CSU in the fall.

A letter grade could also have an impact on a student’s ability to participate in athletics based on criteria set by the California Interscholastic Federation, which governs high school sports in statewide, according to Fugate.

At Del Norte High School, staff has distributed about 200 Chrome Books and have sent more than 105 “paper modules” to families who either don’t have Internet access or feel their student learns better on paper rather than online, Fugate said. He said about 20 percent of his students rely on those paper modules.

At Smith River School, staff distributed more than 120 devices, said Nicole Cochran, the K-8 campus’s new principal. With 250 students enrolled, most receive their meals via the school district. School staff serve about 100 meals on campus, Cochran said.

Cochran said many of her students struggle with the new online learning model. Staff are making calls home to make sure students are attending classes, but it’s difficult, she said. Especially for parents who have children with special needs.

“The district is coming up with guidelines on roughly how many hours students should spend,” Cochran said, adding that it’s about five hours per week, or about one hour a night with a parent. “There’s a lot of stuff we are restructuring to do ‘must-dos’ and ‘may-dos’ for parents.”

Cochran said teachers are also holding office hours on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for parents. She noted that the district also has tutorials on the new platforms for parents on its website.
DNUSD’s newest trustee, Charlaine Mazzei, who has a special needs son at Redwood School, said she was concerned about actual instruction. She said it wasn’t clear on how that would take place.

“I assume the child has been instructed on how to do the work in the packet or how to do the work online, and that’s not necessarily the case when you’re supposed to be moving on to new material,” Mazzei said. “What is the expectation for teachers to record or provide instruction on new material as we move through the school year? And how is that going to be accessible to us parents who have to sit down with the kid and say, ‘This is how we add up fractions’?”

Mazzei’s colleague, Board President Frank Magarino also asked how teachers would support a student if they’re struggling to understand the work that’s required of them.

Harris pointed out that one of the challenges is that for most students, distance learning is new.

Still, Harris said, teachers are providing new content, including video taped lessons. He said he saw one instructor tutoring 27 students in math via Zoom. But, he said, students are missing out on music classes, language and art lessons.

“Nobody signed up for this,” he said. “Our staff is doing a great job given the limited tools they have.”

Mazzei, however, said she doesn’t want to lose sight of the idea that the district should be trying to “get our kids as close to what they would be if we had semi-normal school again.” She went back to her son learning about fractions.

“I don’t know what instruction he’s been provided already,” she said. “I don’t know how to tie the online stuff to what he’s supposed to know. There has to be some support for continuing that education, and even some packets, depending on where they came from, may not be what was being taught in the classroom.”

When Magarino asked her what attending high school was like via distance learning, student trustee Elizabeth Ward said she misses the social aspect the most. Ward said she’s adapted well to Zoom and other distance learning modules, though she noted it may be different for a student that doesn’t have a similar drive to succeed academically.

“The information’s out there from teachers,” she said. “They always ask for questions. It depends on the student what they’re going to get out of it.”

Documents

• DNUSD distance learning plan

• Grading during emergency school closures resolution

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