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Previously:

• Del Norte Students Will Start School Online On Aug. 31

• Del Norte Unified Takes Blended Approach to Blended Learning

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Though they had already discussed starting school a week later than previously scheduled, Del Norte Unified School District Trustees on Thursday made the Aug. 31 start-date official.

Staff will have from Aug. 19-28 to contact families, prepare lesson plans and be trained on safety protocols in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Students will be logging onto their ChromeBooks and other devices on Aug. 31, Superintendent Jeff Harris said.

Four members of the Board of Trustees approved a revised 2020-21 academic calendar that adds two to five working days for classified and certificated staff. The calendar gives students a full 180 days of instruction — just like a regular school year, DNUSD Superintendent Jeff Harris told trustees.

Trustee Area 3 representative Frank Magarino was absent.

“Aug. 31 it’s going to be on, but it’s going to be on virtually. School is happening on that day,” Harris said. “There are going to be challenges. We’re issuing devices to all students — we’re going to have to do a lot of preliminary work over the next two weeks about how to log onto the devices, about how to get to the programs the students are going ot be using. Teachers are going to help with that. District staff are going to help with that.”

At a special meeting Aug. 6 trustees decided on a phased approach to the 2020-21 school year, beginning with all students engaging in online learning through Sept. 11. They will then transition into Phase 2, which involves bringing small groups of special needs and at-risk kids to campus.

On Oct. 5, Phase 3, or blended learning, will kick in for kindergartners through 8th-graders, while students at Del Norte High School will stay in Phase 2.

Del Norte’s blended learning model will have students in the classroom two full days a week and learning online the remaining three days of the week. Parents were also able to have their youngsters take part in their lessons remotely regardless of the learning phase the district is in.

During her presentation to trustees, Coleen Parker, the district’s human resources director, pointed out that distance learning is going to be different than the crisis learning model DNUSD was forced into when schools shuttered in March.

Different attendance requirements must be met, Parker said. Teachers have to determine how much work their students must do, how their students will submit their work and how much of their students’ grade their assignments will be worth. Starting school on Aug. 31, gives them eight days to get up and running.

“They’ll be making phone calls home, checking in with their students and hopefully getting to know them and getting them ready to go so they can start on the 31st,” Parker said. “If we do this then the requirement would be the school days would become Nov. 2, Nov. 23, March 22, May 28 and June 11.”

Under the previous academic calendar, Nov. 2 would have been a professional development day. Nov. 23 is the Monday before Thanksgiving. March 22 is another professional development day. May 28 is the Friday before Memorial Day weekend and June 11, a Friday, would have been the final day of school, according to Parker.

The revised academic calendar would also require certificated staff to work two extra days, resulting in an $181,920 in salaries, Parker said.

Classified staff would work an additional two to five days, Parker said. The additional cost to the district as a result wouldn’t exceed $256,482, she said.

According to Harris, teachers will be developing daily schedules that can be used during the first phase of the school year through some in-person learning.

Attendance will also be mandatory. The district will provide training for teachers on what participation looks like and what they should expect from their students, Harris said. Teachers will also have to plan for the possibility that a student isn’t participating, he said.

“How are we ensuring that our students have that feeling of school connectedness and not that, ‘I’m staring at a screen; nobody on the other side cares what I’m doing,’” Harris said. “We’re still trying to build that school community along with it, so that is part of the planning process.”

According to Harris, attendance will be based on whether a student is turning in his or her work. Though the district is working on boosting students’ access to the Internet, setting up wireless access points throughout the county as well as setting up broadcast towers, students can also participate in their classes via Zoom using a phone, Harris said.

Live interaction could be done with a phone call even if a teacher is conducting lessons via Zoom, Harris said.

“Students could call in,” Harris said. “They may have difficulty seeing something online, but they could definitely call in and participate virtually. You could even raise your hand by telephone.”

Since a student’s attendance will be determined by the work he or she submits to their teacher, Harris said it may be easier for some to be present at school via a distance learning model. Bringing up the School Attendance Review Board, which enforces attendance, Harris said the only time a student or family may come to the attention of SARB is if they’ve made a decision “not to engage” in school.

“Students who do not participate, which means they are not completing the work, will be identified as a chronic absentee,” he said.

Trustees Angela Greenough and Charlaine Mazzei brought up the question of daycare and determining if providers have what they need to help students access their lessons.

Greenough said there was concern among parents who work that their child could be marked absent if the daycare provider couldn’t help them get online.

Mazzei pointed out that many students will be in a daycare setting or they’ll be with other caregivers who aren’t their parents. She urged district administrators to reach out to community organizations such as the Del Norte Child Care Council for help.

“It’s been my experience, not just here, that schools tend to think they have to carry the whole burden themselves and they don’t,” Mazzei said. “There’s a lot of people working with daycare providers. There’s organizations that help with income support. If there’s a barrier to Internet access, for example, is there a low-cost internet program we can sign people up for. I really would encourage you to reach out to reach out to the nonprofit community, social services — you said you have a good relationship with probation — and say here’s what we need. We need help connecting to daycare providers, can you help us with that?”


Harris said though DNUSD reached out to both the Child Care Council and the Yurok Tribe about expanding its network, more outreach needs to be done.

Nearly everyone who spoke during the public comment period approved starting school on Aug. 31, saying the extra few days for teachers to reach out to families and determine lesson plans are needed. But a few people argued for requiring teachers to conduct their online lessons from their classrooms.

“This is a really weird time right now and I feel like any type of normalcy we can give these kids is going to be really importantly, especially for my son who is special needs,” one parent said.“These teachers need to be going back to the classroom and teaching from the classroom. These kids aren’t going to be present. There’s no risk of exposure if the students aren’t actually there and I feel like it’s really important to familiarize all students with what the potential classroom the goal to be in looks like.”

Another parent, Mary Wilson, said in a letter that during March and April teachers conducting classes from home were often interrupted.

This assertion received some push back from teachers, such as Mary Peacock fifth-grade teacher Paige Thompson, who said there are policies in place to hold teachers accountable.

Another teacher, Patsy Shelton, said teaching without distractions isn’t possible.

“If I’m sitting in a classroom, I’m getting calls from the office, I have students off task, I have parents sending Dutch Bros to school for their kids,” she said. “There are always distractions. This is not a valid argument in my opinion.”

Del Norte Unified’s phased approach to reopening schools is based on where the county is on California’s Resilience Roadmap. DNUSD’s “Continuum of Education” alternates between full online learning in Phase 1 and a full reopening of schools at Phase 4 based on the community’s overall progress addressing the spread of COVID-19.

A single new COVID-19 case was reported to the Public Health Branch on Thursday, according to the county’s Information Hub. The case is still under investigation, but is thought to be related to travel.

A patient with active disease is still hospitalized with symptoms, according to the Public Health Branch. Others are isolating at home, according to the Public Health Branch.

Documents

• Revised 2020-21 Academic Calendar

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