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Education Dive
3 coronavirus challenges for curriculum directors this fall
Administrators are facing tighter budgets along with a need to
establish expectations and adopt resources that fit multiple paths.
Lauren Barack
June 17, 2020
Robert Dillon knows any plan to bring back 2,700 students this fall
can’t be boilerplate. That’s why the director of innovative learning
for The School District of University City in Missouri instead
envisions a scenario that dips, dives, moves forward and back — all
throughout the year.
To him, the best solution is one that’s flexible, so if students have
to learn from home again for a period of time, their learning needs are
still met.
“We’re trying not to think so much of a Plan A or Plan B, but what does
it look like when you’re in a phase?” he told Education Dive. “Everyone
learning from home? We don’t think that’s what’s best for kids. But
learning from what we’re doing now, and making it the best and as
robust as we can, that’s one piece of the puzzle.”
For many districts, summer has already started. And typically,
curriculum directors and superintendents have fall plans fairly set.
Although many states are loosening restrictions, school districts
remain watchful. While some are considering how schools will look when
they reopen, many believe they need to prepare for scenarios that send
them home again.
The goal, though, is to ensure education, wherever that happens, is not disrupted.
Parallel tracks for instruction
For Dillon, that goal means looking at building two pathways at once —
a scenario where students are learning in physical classrooms and a
parallel one that’s online.
“I think all districts have to consider what it looks like to have a
full-time virtual academy,” Dillon said. “I think all schools going
forward have to have some kind of truly robust, virtual academy and
figure out how to staff it.”
In the Douglas County School District in Castle Rock, Colorado,
Superintendent Thomas S. Tucker wants options that protect students'
ability to learn alongside teacher bandwidth and yet are flexible
enough to weather the continuing impact of COVID-19.
Tucker, who was the 2016 American Association of School Administrators
National Superintendent of the Year, is looking at multiple scenarios,
including one where some students are online a couple of days a week,
with another group in classrooms, and then the two switch.
“We are planning — the verbs are very important — for a traditional
fall opening in time, but we’re also preparing to continue remote
teaching and learning,” he told Education Dive. “So we’re going to
spend the summer paying close attention to how COVID-19 is impacting
our community and our state, and our hope is to have a regular opening
for the fall semester. But we are preparing for different scenarios.”
A phased-in approach
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released guidelines
called "Considerations for Schools" to help guide districts on the best
path forward for the fall. Without telling administrators what to do,
they offer three scenarios, ranging from the lowest to highest risk.
The thread through all three scenarios is density — students and
educators at home isolated, as opposed to everyone at school together.
Administrators appear to be eyeing a middle ground, including
everything from one-way hallways to meals eaten at desks, and even
certain grades allowed to come back, while others stay in distance
learning setups.
Dillon said even 50% attendance on the first day of school is not
likely in his district. Instead, the district is looking more at
starting the school year with just 10-15% capacity in a building, and
then remaining flexible enough so numbers could increase or decrease
depending on COVID-19.
"What would it look like for kindergarten and 1st grade coming back to
the building, and then recognizing that the first day, one of our kids
and family are contagious [and] we need to shut the building for a
period,” he said. “I think this is not linear. I think we have zero
students, and then 10%, then 50%, then zero and then 10% again. That is
going to be our first semester.”
This will ultimately impact how curriculum is planned and what
resources are invested in, as any expectations and tools will need to
be flexible to adjust to any of these scenarios.
Nice to have vs. have to have
While building two pathways may be the ideal, administrators believe
their budgets, designed to support one pathway, are going be cut due to
lower tax revenues related to the coronavirus. And with recommendations
that class sizes be smaller so students and educators can continue to
socially distance in a face-to-face environment, many administrators
are wondering how can they hire more teachers to support that shift.
Matthew Joseph, director of curriculum, instruction and assessment for
Leicester Public Schools in Massachusetts, said his decisions based on
budget cuts will come to choosing between things he would like to have
for his district and what he knows he has to have. For example, while
he would like class sizes to come down to 20 students, he’s mandated to
have them at least under 30, but not smaller than that.
And then there’s a question of budget lines where he could save funds.
That might include bussing, for example, Joseph said, and whether
children who live within a mile of school can do without bussing if
that saves the district $100,000.
“We’re looking at making a needs-based budget and looking at our
priorities, our must-haves, nice-to-haves and our wish list,” he told
Education Dive. “There are certain things we have to have. Bussing is a
must-have. Distance is a nice to have."
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