Jessica Cejnar / Thursday, Aug. 6, 2020 @ 7:08 p.m. / Education, Emergencies, Health
Del Norte Students Will Start School Online on Aug. 31; Trustees Decide On Phased Approach to 2020-21
Del Norte education officials decided Thursday that students will begin the 2020-21 school year online Aug. 31 — about a week later than the district’s pre-COVID start date.
Though the plan drew mixed reaction from parents and guardians, the Del Norte Unified School District Board of Trustees went along with the recommended phased-in approach to bringing kids back into the classroom.
All students will learn online through Sept. 11 and then transition to Phase 2, which involves bringing small groups of special needs and at-risk kids to campus. The phased-in reopening plan calls for beginning Phase 3, or blended learning, on Oct. 5 for K-8 students, though Del Norte High School will stay in Phase 2, according to Superintendent Jeff Harris’s recommendation.
“There’s no way to look at every class that’s enrolled in by each student individually and say, ‘If these kids come to school they will only have half classes,’” Harris said of Del Norte High School. “Del Norte High School will stay in Phase 2 even if the rest of the district goes to Phase 3.”
The district’s Phase 3 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 what learning phase the district is in.
Parents will have a chance to weigh in further on the district’s reopening plan at two town hall meetings at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesday.
Harris based his recommendation on the district’s “Continuum of Education,” which coincides with where Del Norte County is on the state’s Resilience Roadmap. The continuum alternates between full online learning at Phase 1 and a full reopening of schools at Phase 4 based on the community’s overall progress in addressing the spread of COVID-19.
Completely reopening campuses isn’t currently an option based on state and local public health orders, Harris said. If trustees did decide to bring students back to campus on Aug. 31, he said, each one could be charged with a misdemeanor for violating those orders.
Del Norte County had two active cases as of Wednesday afternoon, according to the Public Health Branch’s COVID-19 information hub. No new cases were reported to the Public Health Branch as of Wednesday.
Harris’s recommendation also called for adjusting DNUSD’s calendar for the 2020-21 school year. If students start their first-day of learning on Aug. 31, he said the district may have to extend the school year by two days, which would result in additional personnel costs. DNUSD could use federal COVID-19 Learning Loss Mitigation dollars, he said, though it would have to negotiate with the Del Norte Teachers Association and California School Employees Association Great Northern 178 to add those days to the calendar.
Representatives with both bargaining units need to discuss changes to the calendar with Coleen Parker, DNUSD’s human resources director, before bringing it back to the Board of Trustees, likely by next week, Harris said.
Students are expected to receive ChromeBooks on Aug. 17. Certificated staff are set to return to work Aug. 19 while their classified counterparts come back two days later. Everyone will participate in training from Aug. 24-28, Harris said.
Not only do staff have to be trained on the distance learning model as well as curriculum, families are also going to need learn how to help their youngsters access those lessons online, Harris said.
“Kids aren’t going to be sitting in a classroom with the teacher showing them how to do it,” he said. “Training, outreach, prep are all going to be wrapped up in the first eight days.”
Harris also reiterated that distance learning will be drastically different to the “crisis learning” that took place when trustees shuttered schools on March 16. At that time, California Governor Gavin Newsom ordered districts to provide “high-quality educational opportunities,” Harris said. Though students will not be in an actual classroom starting Aug. 31, they’ll be at school, he said.
“I’d also remind parents that education in the state of California is compulsory whether we’re looking at distance learning or blended learning,” he said. “Our goal is to be supportive and identify and overcome barriers to participation.”
This support includes figuring out a way to get Internet to the 700 or so students whose families don’t have it. When schools closed in March, the district addressed this problem by setting up access points in its school parking lots and in other areas, Harris said.
Staff are also working with community partners, especially in the outlying areas, if the district can install its internet at their facilities, he said.
Feedback from parents, teachers and staff on Thursday ranged from those who said students need to return to the classroom to others who didn’t feel it would be safe.
Derrick Campbell, the district’s director of transportation and a father of five, argued that DNUSD’s phased-in approach to the school year was overly cautious. Campbell cited a July 23 statement from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, saying that 7 percent of school-aged children account for 7 percent of COVID-19 cases and less than 0.1 percent die of the disease.
“We need to make our decisions based on facts and not be overly cautious,” Campbell said. “I know I have a student in high school that if he doesn’t go back to high school, he is going to be declining. You can’t compare online learning with in-person learning.”
Former Del Norte County Sheriff, Dean Wilson, who has three high school students, also cited CDC statistics and called for a full reopening of schools. He said his family’s experience with online learning between March and May was poor and that if it continues his family would pursue “more professional online education programs.”
Seventh-grade English teacher Patsy Shelton said though she wants to be back in the classroom, members of her household are at-risk for serious illness should she bring COVID-19 home from school. Shelton said she is also at risk.
“I have Type A blood. I’m more susceptible to negative reactions to COVID. Weight is an issue, age is an issue,” she said. “Kids may not be a high risk, but I am, and I can’t teach from a pine box.”
Addressing an assertion from District 3 Trustee Frank Magarino that teachers be required to conduct lessons from their classrooms even during the distant learning phase, Shelton argued that location wasn’t important.
“I want to do a distance learning model and I can do a great job of it and I did do a great job of it during crisis learning,” she said. “My life is important, the background is not.”
Parent Sara Barbour also addressed the idea of requiring teachers to be in their classroom while conducting online classes. Saying she chose to have her children learn remotely for the year, she argued that teachers have their own families they need to take care of.
“The entire country, the entire world, is having to figure out new ways to adjusting how our world is right now,” Barbour said. “To pigeonhole teachers and make them do certain things, I don’t think is fair. It’s just not our kids they have to take care of, they have kids of their own.”
Jessica Curry said she was concerned out the percentage of kids, including her own, that struggle with online learning.
“My sons didn’t learn nothing,” she said. “They met zero goals out of their IEPs in the second half (of the year). Where’s that gap going to get filled in?”
Parents also addressed the difference between of student cohorts in the classroom and the proliferation of learning pods, family groups that are becoming popular in metropolitan areas as parents navigate online learning. Harris suggested that giving parents guidance on how a pod is structured may solve daycare challenges.
Debbie Corning, who cares for four school-aged children and whose eight grandchildren attend DNUSD schools, argued that kids need social interaction. She said she was concerned about the increase in mental health problems.
“I don’t know how putting school off further down the line is going to address any of those issues,” she said. “If the school is going to promote learning pods as an idea for working parents, what is the difference between promoting a learning pod for two, three, four families? Isn’t that the same thing as having small cohorts at school, which I believe we need to do?”
If the district is building a cohort of students, that cohort must be stable, which takes about three weeks to achieve, Harris said. That cohort has to be stable for a minimum of nine weeks or longer, he said.
“When we bring kids together that cohort is only a cohort for that time in that class,” he said. “The moment they leave and go home and go play with friends or go to a caretakers’ home or go see another family member, that’s outside of our control and that cohort doesn’t exist.”
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