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Fri, 03/27/2020 - 16:51
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Districts must switch to Distance Learning Curriculum to instruct through May 15

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El Reno Public Schools Superintendent Craig McVay knows parents and guardians are anxious to hear about the plan to educate the district’s nearly 3,000 students during the COVID-19 outbreak.

However, as of Thursday, McVay and the rest of the district’s leadership team was still waiting on the Oklahoma State Department of Education to release its mandated framework so El Reno could begin formulating a plan.

“They said they will have the framework to us by Friday. Once we get it we will spend the next week formulating our plan. We just don’t know what the formula will be,” said McVay.

The base formula from the state, said McVay, will cover many areas such as what free resources the district will have to utilize from the state as well as a plan to teach special education students.

The Oklahoma State Board of Education voted last week to shutter all school buildings in the state through the week of May 8-15. The move amended its March 16 ruling that closed schools through April 6.

Along with canceling in-person classes for the rest of the year, the board also voted to waive the state-mandated 180 days or 1,080 hours of in-school instruction.

School districts will now move to a Distance Learning Curriculum to educate students through the May date. The state board also allowed the education method to continue past that date if district administrators so choose.

McVay said the district will have a plan that blends technology with hands-on learning materials for students.

“You can spend all day trying to convince me that online learning is just the same as brick and mortar learning. It may be good for some but not for everyone. It’s not the same as the whole child education, which is the student being in a classroom with a highly trained, educated and engaged teacher.

“No matter what we do, we cannot be unequal or punitive. We have to be flexible and go grade level by grade level and course by course,” said McVay.

Districts must develop and submit a plan to the OSDE for approval. Once plans are approved, districts can start distance learning.

“You are going to get a curriculum, not an education. Anyone can click a mouse and send a message to deliver a lesson but to me that is not an education but a lesson,” said McVay.

State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister said the decision to move to distance learning now and not after the April 6 date was made to give districts time to comply.

“It isn’t possible for districts to flip a switch to this kind of delivery mode without advanced notice. It’s always better to plan now than in a crisis,” said Hofmeister.

Where to go from here?

McVay calls the coronavirus a 100-year epidemic since El Reno has not had to close its physical doors for this long since the Spanish flu outbreak in 1918.

He said the district’s teachers are in a grieving process.

“I know that sounds weird but we have to grieve a little bit. We have teachers that are losing an entire semester of contact with kids because of choices that were not their own.

“We all understand that the coronavirus is a dangerous thing and that we have to stop it. But the teachers have seen their kids for the last time this year and that is crushing,” said McVay.

McVay said the next step will be seeing how surrounding states are handling their education delivery. He points to Kansas, which shuttered its schools for the year a week ago, as a possible model.

“We have been studying the Kansas completion plan for a week and we have some ideas of what is available,” said McVay.

McVay said the delivery method for El Reno will be with resources the district has in hand.

“What we will not be doing is buying an education for someone. Every vendor who has tried to sell us something has an education package for a fee, but we won’t be doing that. We will use learning platforms (digital) that we have and that we are familiar with,” said McVay.

The district will also use material that is being offered by the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority (OETA) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) for those students without digital capabilities.

“We’ve been told that those are part of the framework from the state,” said McVay.

Packets of materials for students to use will also be utilized, but that also creates hurdles. The Centers for Disease Control predicts that one in six Oklahomans has the chance of contracting COVID-19 and McVay said he worries about exposing risks in producing the materials, delivering them to students, picking them back up and grading the material.

McVay said El Reno’s plan will start April 6.

“We will have educational material in some factor to deliver to the kids on April 6. It may have to be delivered a week at a time at this point,” he said.

Hello, can everyone hear me?

Digital technology will be part of El Reno’s educational plan, but to what extent depends on students’ ability to access those platforms.

McVay said during the 2018 teachers strike, El Reno did a student survey that revealed nearly 40 percent of its 3,000 students did not have either Internet access at home, a useable device to get online with, or both.

Another problem, said McVay, is that pre-kindergarten through second grade use Apple-based iPads and applications for that platform. Grade levels three through 12 use Chromebooks.

“Every online learning platform we own has reached out and told us there will be no additional charge for extensions of licensings,” said McVay.

He said all 190 teachers in the district will have a device in their homes, if they don’t already have one, that is capable of delivering digital material and lessons to students.

Internet access is another story. There are companies offering free Internet access for three months for students and teachers but not everyone lives in those companies’ service areas. Those that do also face signal strength issues.

McVay, who lives on a farm, said he has to use satellite Internet at his house and the service signal is not strong enough for online learning. He knows other educators in the district have expressed the same problem.

The district has explored the idea of using hot spots in either students’ homes with no Internet access or in businesses in town that would allow students and teachers to park close and access those spots.

McVay said the idea is still on the table but faces problems.

“We have estimated that the amount of hot spots needed and the data usage from them would cost $46,000 for two months. I’m not sure if that would be good use of district money.

“We have explored putting them in businesses but many of them have had to close under the governor’s list of non-essential businesses until April 14 so that won’t work,” said McVay.

McVay said the district has the ability to provide mass Internet access and usage at one time inside its buildings and surrounding parking lots. However, he questions if parking can be used if the campuses are locked down.