LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Jefferson County Public Schools Superintendent Marty Pollio will recommend starting the 2020-21 school year with nontraditional instruction, he announced during a news conference Thursday.
Kentucky’s largest school district is planning for six-week chunks of remote learning that will provide more opportunities for teachers to interact directly with their classes, according Jefferson County Teachers Association leaders serving on reopening committees.
That means JCPS will start the 2020-21 school year with at least six weeks of nontraditional instruction if his recommendation is approved by the Jefferson County Board of Education, which meets Tuesday, Pollio said, citing rising COVID-19 cases throughout Kentucky as the rationale behind his decision.
"When we look at the safety and health of our students and staff, the risk is just too great right now to come back for in-person instruction," Pollio said, adding that "the vast majority" of district staff will continue working remotely for the time being.
"I will always err on the side of student and staff safety," he said. "I'm just right now not willing to expose our students and staff to COVID-19 and all the things that may come with that, including long-term risks, and most importantly, I'm unwilling to have someone risk losing their life."
His position matches that of most school board members, six of whom have indicated they will vote Tuesday to begin the upcoming school year with distance learning rather than a blend of in-person and virtual education, an opinion shared by most of the district’s educators in a survey from JCTA.
A JCPS staff survey found that 56% of more than 11,000 respondents were uncomfortable returning to schools, including 60% of the more than 5,000 teachers who submitted answers.
Other large, urban districts in cities like Los Angeles, Houston, Atlanta and Nashville are also starting the 2020-21 school year with remote learning, according to a national database maintained by Education Week.
Most school board members worry that with rising numbers of COVID-19 cases in Jefferson County and Kentucky, school staff and students would be at greater risk of infection if schools reopen. Some also expressed concerns of whether public health guidance could be followed in school settings, such as social distancing and wearing masks.
Nearly 80% of respondents to the JCPS staff survey were similarly worried that public health guidance wouldn't be followed in schools, according to board materials in Tuesday's meeting agenda.
Pollio said that the district’s nontraditional instruction model, dubbed “NTI 2.0,” will be better than the version implemented during the hurried transition to distance learning at the end of the 2019-20 school year.
"We'll have much more live and recorded instruction, much like a traditional classroom experience; more opportunities for interaction with classmates and teachers; and more guided coursework that will be individualized to meet the needs of our learners," said Carmen Coleman, the district's chief academic officer.
"Parents can also expect frequent communication from their child's school and teacher. It is not our intent to have students in front of a computer for six hours a day."
Coleman said parents can expect orientation information from their schools in August, and Pollio said additional details about the district's distance learning plan will be presented to the school board Tuesday.
Gov. Andy Beshear, who recommended schools across Kentucky transition to nontraditional instruction to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in mid-March, said the size of JCPS presents "even more challenges than just about any district."
"It appears to me that JCPS is being thoughtful," Beshear said during a news conference Thursday. "We all want to get our kids back in school. Lord, do I want to get my kids back in school, but we've got to make sure it's safe."
"When a district makes a decision based on safety, we're going to support them," said Beshear, who also announced Thursday that 13 more children younger than 5 had tested positive for COVID-19.
Tammy Berlin, who is JCTA’s vice president and sits on the district’s nontraditional instruction planning committee, said the panel discussed providing distance learning in six-week periods so teachers can plan entire learning units for their classes.
“I think the consensus is that that’s kind of a wise approach that we plan a small chunk of NTI, that it’s like we’re planning for a contiguous unit and it’s not just spotty here and there,” she said.
“Six weeks allows people to plan an entire unit, and then if we come back at the end of six weeks and reevaluate is it time to go back or is it not safe, then we can move on to the next six-week units.”
Pollio said the district will evaluate whether it's safe to resume in-person instruction at the end of September in consultation with state and local health officials.
"At that time, we may have a hybrid model ... or we may phase-in our students at the end of that six-week period if it's safe," he said.
The nontraditional instruction committee, one of several developing reopening plans for the district's distance learning and hybrid models that will later be submitted to the Kentucky Department of Education, is focused on making the district’s nontraditional instruction experiences “more engaging and more in-depth like regular classroom work,” Berlin said.
That includes exploring ways to encourage and support teachers to design cross-curricular lessons and projects for students, something JCPS educators experimented with during the district’s first experience with nontraditional instruction, she said.
“If you're planning something for your kids to work on pretty much independently, then it's important to make sure that it's a big project, that it's engaging, that it's planned out step-by-step, and that it is something that is real and relevant to the kids,” said Berlin, who teaches arts and humanities at Atherton High School. “… We’re hoping that teachers will take that and go with it, and we’re going to offer the supports that they need to do that.”
The committee has also discussed providing a more synchronous learning experience during distance learning, she said.
While the committee likely won’t dictate how often teachers need to directly interact with their students through video conferencing, members have talked about the importance of doing so during nontraditional instruction.
“That’s probably more of a building-level decision, but at some point during the week and multiple times, teachers would do some kind of experience where kids could connect all together as a large group on Google Meets and then other times during the week they could have one-on-one” meetings, Berlin said.
"In order to build community between students, you need to have some entire class and some small group synchronous opportunities so the kids are altogether, so we'll build in more of that so it'll feel more like a class," said JCTA President Brent McKim, who serves on a committee overseeing broad subjects like union contracting issues, staffing and human resources.
Grading and progression will also be more reflective of students’ work during nontraditional instruction, she said. A separate committee, of which Berlin will also be a member, is handling that aspect of the district’s distance learning plan.
During its first foray in distance learning, the district’s grading policy allowed remote coursework to help but not hurt students’ grades.
“Of course we want to do no harm now, but we also want their grades to mean something,” Berlin said.
JCPS is also developing professional development plans for its teachers. The school board will consider next week a recommendation to delay the start of the school year from Aug. 12 to Aug. 25 so staff will have more time to prepare.
Alan Young, a resource teacher and project manager for JCPS who also serves on the JCTA board, says two committees working on professional development plans for the district’s nontraditional instruction and virtual academy are collaborating to solidify ideas on how best to prepare teachers for starting the 2020-21 school year remotely.
One key difference compared to last year is that teachers will need to build relationships with new classes of students this year compared to last year, when they transitioned to distance learning with students they had for months.
“I’m sure we’ll be focusing on how do we help people start kind of from scratch when you’ve not met your kids,” Young said.
Teachers will also need to be prepared to handle a transition back to distance learning if JCPS returns to in-person instruction and needs to close certain schools because of COVID-19 outbreaks, he said.
“Meeting students’ needs and knowing who they are, the relationships and the collaboration part with them and with other colleagues is a part that we’ll be really focusing on with regard to our professional learning,” Young said.
Delaying the start of the 2020-21 school year will also give JCPS time to check student addresses to ensure it has the most up-to-date contact information for families, Pollio said.
More than 500 students did not participate at all during its first experience with nontraditional instruction in the spring, JCPS data show.
Pollio noted that JCPS has about 6,000 homeless students, a number that may only increase as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We know we can't lose those kids, so now we have about six weeks to make sure we gather that appropriate information, work with families, get to community centers, whatever that may take to make sure that we have the appropriate and proper information so that all of our teachers can easily contact students throughout the six-week period," he said.
For those students who have fallen behind academically during the COVID-19 closure, Pollio said the district is exploring the possibility of having voluntary supports at schools to help them catch up.
Education will experience "long-term" impacts because of the global pandemic, he said.
"It's going to be a multiyear process of providing interventions and supports for families and kids," Pollio said. "I will say this is so critical that we invest in our school district, we invest in our kids because we are going to need services like we have never seen before when we return to school."
The district will continue operating emergency feeding sites, which as of Wednesday had distributed 1.6 million meals since schools closed in March, Pollio said.
A major concern among school board members is ensuring students have reliable access to high-speed internet.
Pollio has said the district plans to distribute 30,000 more Chromebooks and additional hotspots to help bridge Jefferson County’s digital divide. He’s also cited estimates that 30% of families in Jefferson County lack access to high-speed internet.
JCPS, which has received $29.7 million from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, expects to spend $8.2 million on the new Chromebooks and $1.4 million to add nine months of unlimited data for its T-Mobile hotspots.
The district previously distributed 20,000 Chromebooks and 6,000 hotspots to low-income households and students who have special needs before starting its distance learning plan in April.
Pollio said Thursday that a total of 11,000 hotspots will be available for those who lack connectivity at home, particularly for students with disabilities.
"We will be working to get those out and monitoring to see if we need to get more after that, so we are being very assertive about making sure we meet the needs of our kids with Chromebooks and connectivity," he said, adding that he expects every student who needs a Chromebook for synchronous learning will have one by the start of the school year.
Berlin says the district is planning to provide paper copies of assignments during nontraditional instruction, but she hopes to see another round of federal stimulus funding and strong community partnerships help JCPS and other school districts provide access to homes that lack high-speed internet.
“I don’t think it’s something that JCPS can handle on its own,” she said, echoing the perspective of JCPS school board members.
“There's just no way that we can as a school system fund internet access on our own,” said Chris Kolb, the board’s vice chairman who represents District 2.
The board’s impending decision to start the 2020-21 school year with nontraditional instruction gives clarity for district staff as they prepare to welcome students back to JCPS, virtually, in August.
“The decisions, once they’re made, will actually help us do some of our work versus trying to juggle all the things at the same time, so my hope is that this will be advantageous to us,” Young said. “But what we did know regardless is that all of us have to be better prepared on how to still keep engaging students via virtual learning no matter what scenario we have.”
When JCPS returns to in-person instruction during the 2020-21 school year, families may have the choice of attending a virtual academy instead.
"Not every student will want to or be able to come back in-person nor will every teacher be able to, so we are working on putting in place a virtual academy for those students and staff that will need that kind of remote opportunity," McKim said.
"This six weeks of NTI gives us more time to plan for the best possible implementation of that virtual part."
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