The Board of Education met tonight, but my work schedule always cuts into my ability to watch that live, so instead of coming in in the middle I decided to finish up a synopsis of the final section of the 10/26/2020 Board of Education meeting wherein they went over the new Virtual Model Plus scheme. Greg Hartjes gave the presentation.
Per Greg, since the beginning of the school year, they’ve successfully brought special needs and Classroom Connections students into the classroom. The Fully Virtual Plus Model would allow additional small groups of students into the school for learning opportunities.
A month ago they weren’t comfortable doing this, but they feel differently now.
After 8 weeks of school, Greg says they have growing concerns about the academic, social, and emotional needs of many of their students. Supposedly, they started the first phase of the Virtual Plus model the week of the 10/26/2020 Board meeting. Additional phases should follow.
[Here it should be pointed out that they mentioned “phases” multiple times but never clearly went over what those phases are or reviewed that timeframe and metrics for their implementation.]
The Virtual Plus model will allow small groups of students, following clear safety protocols, to enter school buildings on a limited basis for optional educational opportunities and co-curricular activities.
They are starting with elementary school Level 1 and Level 2 English language learners. Their plan is to add more students over the next several weeks [which seems vague to me–are we talking about 3 weeks? 8 weeks? 12 weeks?] as they work out the logistics and are able to monitor the success of their safety protocols. They want to make sure that they can keep staff and students safe before they add more groups.
There are several targeted groups for whom the “plus” in Virtual Model Plus will eventually be available. At the elementary level, in-person supplemental meetings will be available to (1) English learners (but only those at the lowest levels of english language proficiency, (2) those needing targeted literacy interventions, and (3) social-academic intervention groups.
At the secondary level, in-person meetings will be open to (1) English learners (again, those with the lowest levels of English language proficiency), (2) those needing at-risk programing support, (3) those needing to learn specialty skills that are not easily taught virtually (welding was brought up as an example multiple times), and then those in co-curricular activities such as sports and clubs.
Greg emphasized that these in-person options will not be mandatory; students’ grades will not be affected if they opt to not attend; coronavirus mitigation strategies will be strictly adhered to; groups will be limited in size; they’ll have a process for checking students into the buildings that will reduce overall contact with others; and transportation will be available.
Per Greg and the presentation: “If experience with our current educational model indicates that learning and academic performance have not met District expectations or if inequities for certain groups of students have or may develop then adjustments to our current model may be needed”
[To editorialize a bit, I found that statement confusing, particularly where it references “inequities for certain groups of students”. Opening up the school only to certain groups of students is inherently un-equitable. For example, they may be providing in-person learning opportunities to the English learners with the lowest proficiency, but, at the same time, they’re specifically not providing in-person opportunities to those who are not sufficiently bad at English even if those kids are not proficient and are struggling in the virtual environment as compared to how they were doing when they were at in-person school.
At any rate, the quarter ended November 6. They will be reviewing the data they’ve gathered at that point. They are monitoring three specific areas: 1. Academic, 2. Mental Health/Social-Emotional Learning, and 3. Attendance. They particularly want to see how the youngest learners (the 4-7 year olds) are doing.
Greg then opened it up for question.
Barry O’Connell wanted to know how they were going to select the small groups to come in for instruction?
At this point staff and principles have already identified some of the kids who need additional help.
They want to bring in limited groups to see if their mitigation strategies are working before they open it up to more. Some of the co-curriculars were meeting in the summer, and that model seemed to work, but they stopped those groups when the cases increased. They want to go back to that. They’re doing a soft rollout of this Virtual Plus model now with fewer groups, instead of waiting longer to begin it with more students.
I believe it was also Barry who wanted to know who decides what qualifies for in person groups and figures out the safety protocols?
Ben Vogel developed a process. Per Ben: they created an application process which will be available to any instructor who believes that some of their students would benefit from coming in to work on a specific skill. Part of the application process is to ensure that all of the safety strategies are in place and to ensure that numbers are appropriate. [Although they didn’t state this, it sounds as if an instructor’s application could be denied if those higher-ups felt that whatever they were doing didn’t meet their ideas of what is safe.]
Barry mentioned that they had outbreaks on several teams that had been meeting over the summer.
Ben Vogel disagreed with the term “outbreak”. There were several students at one of the three school sites. They were able to isolate their 10-person pod and they are pretty confident that the students who were Covid did not get from attending school activities but rather acquired it elsewhere. Ben considered what happened over the summer to be a huge success.
Barry pointed out that the summer cases happened at a time when community spread was probably 1/10th of what it is now. Is AASD administration concerned about that?
Per Ben: they absolutely have concerns, and that’s why they’re trying to start out with small steps. But they have to start somewhere.
Barry wanted to know if winter sports teams would be actually competing or just working out.
Ben answered that they’d start with just workouts. They’ll have to make decisions about winter sports within the next several weeks. He reiterated that Virtual Model Plus was about all co-curriculars–not just sports.
Barry was concerned about moving to Virtual Plus in light of the high transmission rate and burden in the Fox Valley right now. The high Covid rate seemed to outweigh AASD’s mitigation efforts in his opinion.
Julie King interjected and confirmed that contact tracing is a challenge. But AASD has a good process in place and is able to do it faster than the city or county can.
Polly Vanden Boogard mentioned that the vast majority of cases in the schools are coming from community spread outside the buildings-not from within the schools.
Leah Olson was pleased with this new model because her son is taking a welding class and will benefit. In her opinion, everything they can do safely, they should do. But, at the same time, she doesn’t necessarily care about what’s happening in the surrounding districts because she doesn’t have a good enough understanding of their mitigation strategies and their cases. So she hasn’t been able to draw any conclusions from the Covid tracker dashboards at other schools. She wants to see data from AASD specifically as they lay more students in.
Jim Bowman though Barry’s caution was well-founded. He liked the slow approach AASD is taking.
At this point Gary Jahnke expressed annoyance that Greg Hartjes wasn’t paying attention to the different Zoom features and the Board members who had had their hands virtually raised for a long time. [And to editorialize, it did seem a little ridiculous that administrative staff at a school district that is hard core into using technology is unable to competently handle a tool as basic as Zoom. If Greg Hartjes not knowing how to utilize Zoom features at all, much less effectively, is similar to the stories I’ve been hearing of teachers utilizing their online platforms in a confusing and haphazard way.]
Deb Truymann thought it was time to think it’s time to move forward with this. She wanted to know how information on available in-person groups would be disseminated to parents and students.
Per Ben Vogel, they have some work to do on that. At the high school level, what classes are available is dependent on the advisors, coaches, and teachers and whether they want to offer in person learning opportunities. Each individual educator would be able to fill out an application. It wasn’t clear who, but I’m assuming someone in administration (perhaps Ben Vogel himself) would then generate a clear process that the coach/advisor could go through to make sure they have enough space and understand the safety guidelines that need to be followed. At that point they’d be given the go-ahead to reach out to the student body and those who are already involved or might want to be involved in that cocurricular.
Deb thought that not all teachers would have a desire to come into the classroom which might potentially put some students at a disadvantage. She wanted to know if there was a way the curriculum could be reviewed by someone to determine if hands-on, in-person small groups should be done for a specific course.
Ben Voge reiterated that they’re starting one a small and limited basis to ensure they can make it work. So they’re starting only with staff and students who want to do it. At some point it would grow. He said there would be opportunities for students to reach out to their teachers and ask for in person opportunities. [Although it should be pointed out that he didn’t give a time frame for how or when that might happen.]
The phrase “layering on” was used so many times.
Gary Janke wanted to clarify that everything was on the table–all winter sports and any clubs.
Per Ben: Yes, winter sports are on the table. They believe the first step is get small groups of kids together for something like workouts and see how that goes. They need to show that it can work and that the students and families will be with AASD on their safety measures and won’t come in if they are sick. The district, the students, and the families will need to do things together. And if they can make it work, it will then open up additional opportunities which could include winter sports. [So, to me, it sounded like winter sports aren’t actually on the table at this very moment.]
Kay Eggert wanted to know the total number of students that could be accommodate.
Per Greg Hartjes: that would depend on the building size. Back on Aug 12th they felt that a hybrid model which would have brought 50% of students into the buildings was too many. They’ve looked at 30%. At the highschools that’s several hundred students. Those students would also be spread out across various times and wouldn’t all be in a building at the same time. The high schools have more space for kids to spread out than the elementary schools. [I find that concerning given that the elementary kids are probably the ones who probably need the most hands-on educational assistance.]
Kay pointed out that the talk had been about co-curriculars/extra-curriculars. She wanted to know what would be done for the students who were having core academic struggles and needed in-person assistance.
Superintendent Judy Baseman said that the at-risk program teachers have reached out to the administration and have identified students who they really want to reach out to and bring in to the school settings. Their English Learners coordinator Amy Swick would love to be able to bring in level 1s and 2s based on academic need. They’ll be using a combination of principals and/or EL coordinators identifying students in conjunction with looking at first quarter testing data. [It really sounds to me like a student is shit out of luck if they’re managing to hold on just enough to not be totally failing in comparison to other kids, even if they are really struggling and need in-person support.]
Kay stated that they’ve tried to follow science and that some studies have suggested that younger children transmit at different rates that old students and adult. She hoped that the administration would look at how transmission rates happened at different school levels and (if I understood her correctly) not necessarily do a blanket response across all schools if transmission rates increase but instead look at schools and school levels individually.
Judy assured her that they’ll analyze each and every piece of data and pause if they need to pause, correct what needs to be corrected, and move forward with confidence that they’re keeping their staff and students safe in addition to offering these new ways to engage.
Kay wanted to make sure that if the school’s offered opportunities that all the students would be able to access them.
Ben Vogel said that bussing is a huge aspect that will enable them to get students places. They have committed staff (specifically mentioned at risk teachers, English language teachers, special needs teachers). They’ve been concerned this whole time about how they can keep the academic gap from widening. Just last week they had Dr. Holly [I’m not sure of the spelling, but he’s a consultant doing racial equity education with AASD staff and teachers] share a powerful message about the role that they all have to help close the gap–especially in today’s world with the pandemic and racial injustice. All the AASD staff members heard that message.
Kris wanted to know how long the district’s contact tracing procedures would be lengthened by adding additional students.
Polly Vanden Boogart didn’t give a clear number but stated that school nurses are busy. They have a school nurse on call at night so they can expedite contact tracing and keep exposed students and staff from returning the next day. A school nurse is also on call on the weekend.
Julie King said that the Virtual Plus Model will allow them to test and see where their supports are and see where improvements are needed, vs immediately going fully to a hybrid model with half of the students and all of the staff on site. It will give them a little more assurance that their safety measures are working. One of the factors in moving to a hybrid model is how well they’re able to do contact tracing.
Kris was concerned about the possibility of one school doing a particular club or sport wouldn’t be available at other schools. She wanted to know if there would be an attempt to have similar opportunities available at each high school.
Ben Vogel agreed that could easily happen and said they were working to make sure it didn, but he did not state what steps they were taking to prevent that.
Kris pictured concerns being expressed by the community if there were different offerings by different schools and their children went to schools where their preferred activity wasn’t offered.
Ben stated that the high schools already have different strengths, programming and club. But they are working to make sure things are equitable.
Kris also wanted to know how providing small group opportunities during the day would impact students’ ability to do other curricular responsibilities. Would they be scheduling things in a way that the students wouldn’t be missing the other instruction that was going on?
Per Ben: High school students have a flexible schedule with only 8 periods over 2 days–only 6 of which are actually used for classes.
Per Nan Bunnow: At the elementary level they will not be doing an application process. It will be similar to what special ed did which is an analysis of each of the students to determine those most in need. They do need to look at the interface between in-person and virtual instruction not only for the students but also for the staff.
That concluded the presentation on the Virtual Plus Model. The Board of Education then went on the vote to give AASD staff raises.
Deb Truymann expressed concerns about giving raises at a time when people are losing their jobs and their housing. She wondered how it would sit with the community.
Greg Hartjes said they hoped as much as half of the compensation increase would be covered by savings from having switched to a different health insurance company/plan.
When it came time to vote Deb thought about it for a bit but then voted “aye” along with the rest of the Board.
You can view the entire meeting here: https://youtu.be/ti5oQf2Twr0
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