The Mead School District has determined the basic outline of how it will proceed with the academic year that will begin next month, but there’s still one important question to answer. That in a minute.
The board on Thursday voted to give parents the option to send their children to school or to keep them at home and learn full-time online, as explained by Superintendent Shawn Woodward.
“For K-5, parents could choose to send their kids just like they normally would. K-5 students would go every day, full day, a regular school day, with all the safety precautions. School will look very different."
"Six-12 will be on a rotating hybrid schedule. If I have a sixth grade student and, say, an eighth-grade student in the school district, those students would be going either Monday, Wednesday and every other Friday or Tuesday, Thursday, every other Friday. That is so we can have half the number of kids in the classrooms at once," Woodward said.
He says families would be on the same schedule.
“On their on days, there will just be small groups of kids, no more than 15-16 in a classroom, receiving their regular instruction from their teacher. On their off days, they will be at home working. Our expectation is they will be at home with a similar schedule doing the classwork that they have been learning about the previous day," he said.
Woodward estimates 70% of parents of children in kindergarten through fifth grade will choose to send their children back to school.
"We will need literally 30% of our staff to be dedicated to the remote learning environments. We would have regular classroom teachers at the K-5 level that would be live broadcasting, if you will, to students that are in a remote setting, much like a regular school day," Woodward said.
The teachers and students would communicate via computer.
“The secondary level’s going to be a little different. As you can imagine, the scheduling’s a little challenging. First we have to determine which students are going to want the remote learning and then how many teachers do we need from which disciplines? We haven’t quite figured that out yet, but most likely, it will be a blend of two things: those students who are at home at the secondary level, they would be with teachers in a live broadcast format that are doing the remote teaching, as well as a blended model where they would be potentially doing some online courses, the more traditional online without live teachers," he said.
And now to the question yet to be decided: Woodward asked the school board for an additional two weeks to figure out some of those details. Tonight, the board will consider whether to push the start of the school year back from September 1 to at least September 13.
He says parents will soon have decisions to make about their own children.
“Tuesday and Wednesday we’re going to be doing some sessions for our families to outline their choices," Woodward said. "The simplest fashion would be they need to decide if they want to send their children to school and if they feel good about the safeguards we have in place or do you want to have your child engage in the remote learning off campus.”
They hope to have parents’ decisions by the end of this week or into next week. Parents will still have the ability to switch later if they aren’t satisfied with the results of their initial decision, but Woodward says changes won’t always happen immediately.
“It’s going to be a little more difficult to switch from online into a regular classroom. We might have to set some deadlines, at quarters or semesters," he said.
Mead has been consulting with Spokane County Health Officer Bob Lutz, whose advice convinced administrators in the Spokane and Central Valley School Districts to start with online only instruction.
“People who are vocalizing their concerns about getting kids back to in-person instruction don’t realize the disruption that will occur as soon as you get a couple of cases in a school. Essentially, you’ll be shutting the classroom down and/or shutting the school down for 14 days," Lutz said. "We’re already seeing this happening in some other states where schools have opened up and, maybe they haven’t had all the precautions in place, but the kids are coming in and, all of a sudden, the kids are being diagnosed and shutting down classrooms.”
Lutz says many of the areas with the highest infection rates in the county are in the Mead district.
“When you look at international levels, you’ll see that schools opened when there were less than 25 per 100,000, less than 50 per 100,000. We’re opening up when we’re more than 200 per 100,000. That puts us at very high risk for transmission,” he said.
Lutz says health officials just don’t know much yet about how easily the virus will be passed around in a school setting, even a modified setting. He says, given Spokane’s current situation, adding new cases to a health care system that’s already got enough to worry about, it’s not a risk he thinks is worth taking.
Shawn Woodward acknowledges the worries and says Mead will work closely with the health district to monitor student and staff health.
“The goal for us would be to remain very fluid. We’re going to train our teachers in remote teaching methods as well as the face-to-face learning, because, ideally, one day, if we had to shut a classroom down, the very next day, those students could log in on their computers. The teacher could log in from wherever they’re at and conduct their day virtually," he said.
He says the district is making sure that all students have the technological equipment and connections they need and they’ll go from there.
“You know, a board member said it last night. We’ve got to give it a try. If we’re truly about serving kids and families, and overwhelmingly, these families want to get their kids back to school, 70+%, that’s our duty," Woodward said.
And it’s his duty to also keep his students and staff as safe as possible.
“I wouldn’t be being honest if I didn’t tell you that, yes, there’s a little bit of stress involved in trying to get it all figured out," he said.
