With “remote” learning in-house in separate rooms, with paras.
Assistant Superintendent Chris Melillo gave that update Tuesday evening in a meeting of the Board of Education’s Operations Committee.
The district must get a full reopening plan to the state by July 24. On Tuesday, Melillo presented the highlights of the plan he and other administrators are still working to complete.
“Transforming education twice in a six-month period is a daunting task,” he began Tuesday. In March, the district, like every other in the state, closed its doors for in-person instruction and finished the school year virtually. Now the district is finalizing plans for a fall that will include both in-person classes and distance learning, and that will allow for the flexibility to move to all online instruction or all in-person instruction if the need arises.
Elementary schools will be open four days a week, Melillo said, and students will be in school five and a half hours each day. They will not be in in-person classes that whole time though. In order to maintain a 10 – 1 student-to-teacher ratio in classrooms to better socially distance, only half of elementary students will actually be in class with their teacher at a time. The other half will go to another part of the building where they can do class virtually with the help of a paraprofessional. Partway through the day, they will switch.
Many parents gave the district feedback that they struggled to help their kids with distance learning this spring, Melillo said. With the district’s plan, students will be able to do distance learning in school, with support, in a socially-distanced manner.
Keeping students far apart will require changes to the way the district’s facilities are used. Sixth graders from all elementary schools will go to the Wintergreen School to allow for more space in the other schools. Gyms, art classrooms, computer labs, and other spaces not usually used for regular instruction will be repurposed to provide enough space to keep students at a safe distance from each other.
The middle school and high school will also be open only four days a week. In both cases, half of students will come in two days a week, and the other half will come to school the other two days. On days when students are not in school, they will be distance learning from home.
The four-day week will allow teachers an extra day for planning, Melillo said. Teachers will have an extra burden of preparing for both in-person classes and distance-learning classes. The extra day will give them more time to prepare. It will also allow maintenance staff to deep clean school buildings.
There are still a few major areas of data the district still needs to collect that could affect the plan, Melillo said. One is transportation. He said the district is still working with First Student to figure out the cost of transporting students to the Wintergreen School. The district also needs to determine how many students and staff will be coming back for in-person instruction. He said the district would be sending out a digital survey to figure that out, and will call every family it doesn’t hear from digitally.
Last week, the board’s goals and evaluations committee met to hear the results of a few surveys of parents, students, and teachers. The results showed that many parents are wary of sending their kids back to school while the virus is still around.
Chief Operating Officer Tom Ariola also said the district has ordered 70,000 masks already for the next school year, and has spent $80,000 on personal protective equipment.
The district will continue soliciting feedback on the plan from parents, and the full board will vote to approve it before it sends it to the state on July 24.