By Scott J. Turnbull, Superintendent, Soquel Union Elementary School District
2020 is nearing its end and never has a year provided so much to reflect on. Thinking back to January, I don’t think any of us could have imagined what our society, including our public school system, was about to go through in the coming year.
Yet, here we are. Having worked in public education for more than 30 years, the idea of closing our schools seemed next-to-impossible to me eleven months ago. COVID-19 came along and changed that reality.
As you know, all school districts in our county shut down in-person operations and provided distance learning to students as a response to COVID-19 during 2020. Our teachers miraculously transitioned their entire curriculum over to digital platforms.
Rather than moving herky-jerky with school openings and closings, our district, like all districts in our county, have instead looked for ways to serve families in new ways and gradually return more in-person learning and services.
Each part of our school district has taken on the challenge of serving families in new ways. For example, our Social Work & Counseling Team has been very proactive.
They sent out a letter that can be found on our website, acknowledging that “the sustained uncertainty of the COVID-19 health crisis may leave students with feelings of stress, anxiety confusion, and sadness that may be uncomfortable and disruptive during an already unpredictable time. To address these potential needs and ensure our students are fully supported while away from campuses, the SUESD counseling team will be available to meet with students and families through virtual platforms like Google Hangouts and Zoom.”
Our Information Technology Team has distributed approximately 1,600 Chromebooks (our district serves about 1,800 students to put that number in perspective) and several hotspots to ensure all of our students have access to distance learning and other online resources. Our Community Liaison has worked with several families on the process of securing free or low-cost internet access.
Our Child Nutrition Services Department has distributed approximately 56,000 free meals to our community’s families since the onset of COVID-19. Our dedicated Child Nutrition Services staff is one group in particular that has stayed working onsite throughout the pandemic due to the nature of their work. It is not an overstatement to refer to them as unsung heroes.
Our School Librarians have coordinated several days of book distribution. They did this on their initiative because of their deep belief in books’ power to enrich children’s lives. Many staff members have stepped up to work in new capacities. This flexibility has allowed us to meet the needs of our community better. For example, bus drivers have helped with food distribution, and office staff has helped our principals with materials distribution at school sites, just to name a couple.
We have been and will continue to be committed to meeting our families’ social-emotional, nutritional, and technical needs through this pandemic. These are basic needs that must be met to ensure distance teaching and learning are realistic.
We have begun to bring back small cohorts of students. We have used an equity lens to prioritize students for these small cohorts. While distance learning has provided some challenges for all students, we have identified certain factors that act as additional barriers to distance learning success.
Some of these factors include learning disabilities, language barriers, or technical challenges despite our other outreach. These and other factors were considered in bringing a small percentage of students back for in-person supervision.
To be clear, most of these students still receive their distance learning in the same manner as if they were at home, but they are doing it under the supervision of support staff members who have flexibly stepped in to monitor and help them in the process.
This small cohort approach provides us the best possible combination of safety and addressing student needs. Having a minimal number of students on campus allows us space to properly enforce physical distancing while also allowing us to serve our students who need the most support.
At one point earlier this year, when the COVID-19 case rate had decreased, we had hoped for the possibility of implementing a hybrid learning model in January.
A hybrid model would increase the number of students receiving in-person learning on any one day to approximately 50% of a school’s enrollment. As you know, though, case rates have since significantly increased. At the time of writing this article, our county was in the Purple, or Widespread, Tier on the Blueprint for a Safer Economy.
Given that we are approaching winter, cold and flu season, and the holidays, it is no longer realistic to transition to a hybrid model of instruction in January. We will continue to be in a distance learning environment in January.
We are staying the course on two essential items. First, we are staying the course with our small student cohorts that are currently in place. Secondly, we are staying the course on the planning of hybrid instruction. We will take all the stakeholder survey data we have collected and build our hybrid program’s details. This way, we can continue to monitor the Blueprint for a Safer Economy and be ready to implement our hybrid program when it is safe to do so.
For all of us in society, 2020 has indeed been a challenge, and school districts are no different. I want our community to know that we have approached this challenge by identifying our families’ basic needs and how to address them.
We have always put the safety of our students and staff first. We have balanced the need for physical safety with the equity-based need to serve small cohorts of students in-person. We are committed to implementing a hybrid model of instruction when it is safe to do so. I wish all of our students could be back on campus now. They are the reason all of us got into are in the field of education.
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Scott J. Turnbull is superintendent of Soquel Union Elementary School District.