Continued building, connection constructing and the opening of a new elementary school will be best priorities in the Westerville City Educational facilities in 2022.
Superintendent John Kellogg mentioned a major aim would be to keep design initiatives going forward and being on rate and on spending budget to provide spaces that are exciting folks and including value to the district.
He said the addition of specialized classrooms and improved classroom spaces, in common, are positives for the district.
Scott Dorne, assistant superintendent of functions, explained the district is finding ready to proceed with the Whittier Elementary University renovation and addition and Hawthorne Elementary College renovation.
“Those projects will consider position above the subsequent two many years or, in impact, a few summers,” he stated. “Those are very significant tasks. The variance among these projects and the assignments we’re running proper now are those people two buildings do not have swing (short-term-occupancy) space for our students, so the bulk of the perform will materialize around breaks.”
He explained Annehurst Elementary Faculty is in the center of the next pod section.
“So just one pod is accomplished, and the addition is completed,” Dorne explained. “The 2nd pod will be concluded in February. They then will changeover into the past pod then the major office spot will take place about the summer. This venture is moving along seriously properly. Robertson Construction (Products and services Inc.) is doing a great task. We’re definitely psyched about the consequence below (at Annehurst).”
He stated the design and style inspiration for element of the Annehurst developing was the forest.
“We introduced in some various kind of ceiling products,” he mentioned. “It’s continue to composite. It’s not a wood. It gives a good, warm sensation to this wing. Kids occur out to breakout areas – task-centered discovering locations.”
Dorne explained Annehurst’s lunch spot also was bumped out to deliver supplemental room.
“We extra eight windows that improved the natural environment totally,” he stated. “The purely natural light adjustments your lunch ambiance, adding colour and warmth. It is a considerably nicer put to sit and have lunch. We also additional some booth seating.”
“Phase 3 is wrapping up right now, which is the south academic wings but on the second ground,” he reported. “What we also have is abatement operate for stage 4 that should end in August.”
Just as stage 4 finishes, section 5, the north educational wing on the second floor will be in progress, he mentioned.
“We’ll end with phase 6, which will be the principal business area, and then the new curtain wall together the entrance of the constructing,” he reported. “That will end up South Superior Faculty. We’re seeking ahead to just a definitely busy, chaotic yr, even busier than (2021). All of our existing assignments will however be heading on, and then we throw in Hawthorne and Whittier.”
Dorne claimed provide-chain troubles have been a relatively large variable in particular areas.
“Metal has been an ongoing situation,” he mentioned. “Wooden doorways have been difficult. We’re in south section 3, waiting for doorways to arrive. We may possibly actually even have to commence a pair lecture rooms devoid of doorways just since the items won’t get listed here.”
“The reality is the supply-chain complications for the duration of time it took 6 months back is not the exact as it is right now. It continues to alter. Some is getting a lot more conveniently out there, but other products, you assume they are heading to appear but they just take lengthier. The challenge is continue to making an attempt to strategy.”
Righting the ship
Kellogg said the next-most significant concentration in the district is the energy and creativeness of workers to handle many difficulties.
“I think for us it will be lifting our head again up and seeking out towards what do we want to do in the following quite a few years,” he stated. “We’re in a very good, economic stable place, which is very beneficial. We’re hoping to function with the board and our management workforce to decide our head up, get out of the weeds and glance ahead once more to what we require to execute about the next several a long time to include price to our university encounter for our kids and group, rebuild our connection with the community.”
Kellogg reported it is apparent that the struggles since the pandemic started in early 2020 have impacted the district’s relationship with the group.
“Our lack of ability to be the district we want to be underneath these problems has impacted our connection with the community, and we want to rebuild that,” he mentioned. “We want to be that valued, dependable college community they want us to be. That will be a massive a single. Just lifting up our staff members yet again. It has been tricky. Even going into this yr, we envisioned matters to be sort of be back again to regular, but it has been less there.”
Wanting forward, Kellogg mentioned, the district faces new varieties of challenges involved with labor shortages.
“They’re obtaining new unfavorable results on us,” he reported. “As we glance, we’re like, ‘OK, that might be very long term.’ It may possibly be the new way of small business that you are just heading to struggle for staff in some of your sectors. We can not just sit on our palms and just dwell that way. We’re pursuing very long-time period answers to some of all those troubles so that we can sort of ideal the ship.”
Dorne said he anticipates the new school to be finished in May.
“Robertson is also accomplishing that challenge,” he stated. “They’re striving to shoot for an earlier time line. We’ll have that facility in Could and insert our furnishings immediately after that. That job is going extremely nicely.
We are just now starting off to imagine about the staffing ingredient. So we have a staffing approach for the new elementary. On Jan. 7, all all those positions get posted. We’ll commence the using the services of course of action for all the academics for that up coming fall opening.”
Kellogg stated opening the new elementary will have a massive impression on the elementaries in general as the district goes via the procedure of redistricting.
“That will be bumpy since we will be transferring people all over and families,” he explained. “People know it’s coming, and they are getting completely ready for it. But the new constructing is excellent.”
Kellogg stated it will suitable-size the other elementaries, offering far more instruction room to fulfill students’ requirements.
“That’s likely to be substantial,” he said. “Right behind that, a 12 months afterwards, we’re making ready for the (Minerva Park) middle faculty. Really, we’ll start – by this time up coming year – we’ll be up and managing with staffing, etc. We anticipate that move right powering the elementary for the middle schools that will be very major and acquiring our middle schools in greater sizes. Those are significant projects.”
NEENAH — After practically 100 decades of operation, Roosevelt Elementary School will shut just after next school yr.
At a conference Tuesday evening, the Neenah Joint School District board voted 6-3 to move ahead with the first stage of the elementary amenities prepare that will close the school on Doty Island at the conclusion of the 2022-23 college 12 months.
Through more than hour of public remark, about 15 folks spoke about the proposed closure. There were being Island residents who asked board users to delay the determination and teachers who claimed it can be difficult to educate in the present faculty.
The approved plan will move Roosevelt learners, together with the kids who show up at Wilson Elementary School, to the present-day Horace Mann Middle School, which will turn out to be an elementary school when center school learners transfer to the present large college in 2023. Alliance Charter School — at the moment positioned in Roosevelt — will be moved to Wilson.
Board member Kristian Sahr asked about the upcoming of Roosevelt and was informed there have not been any official discussions about what’s upcoming for the making.
The plans to near the school and transfer all over the other pupil populations had been discussed at the Dec. 7 board conference, and a community listening session was held Dec. 15.
Right before the last vote, Doty Island resident and board member Stefanie Holt motioned to postpone the vote until finally January or February, with a determination to do group engagement. That movement unsuccessful.
In her opinions throughout the dialogue, Holt said her issues are not about the proposal so a great deal as they are about the “haste” in coming to a vote.
In 2020, taxpayers backed a $115 million referendum that’s being made use of to fund the design of a new superior university and the renovation of the existing significant school into a middle college campus for fifth- by way of eighth-graders. Each educational institutions are scheduled to open in 2023.
Relocating the middle-university grades to the Tullar Road campus of the present-day superior school will enable the district to market Shattuck Middle Faculty, repurpose Horace Mann as an elementary faculty and no cost house at other elementary educational facilities, The Put up-Crescent formerly claimed.
Here is a breakdown of what the board approved Tuesday evening:
Shut Roosevelt facility at the end of the 2022-23 university year
Repurpose Horace Mann Middle University as a 5K through fourth-quality faculty
Combine Roosevelt and Wilson elementary educational institutions attendance areas to feed into Horace Mann
Assign Roosevelt and Wilson students to Horace Mann starting up with the 2023-24 school 12 months
Relocating Alliance Constitution Faculty to the Wilson facility and begin growth of Alliance setting up with the 2023-24 faculty yr
The district, which operates 10 elementary faculties out of 9 structures, claims the approach is needed because it’s functioning out of space.
Lots of faculties don’t have area for committed art or new music rooms, district leaders say, and it can be tough to increase new courses.
Enrollment has been continual since 2016-17 and foreseeable future projections show only average advancement. But Steve Dreger, director of elementary studying and management, wrote the board to say moving fifth grade out of elementary and into the fifth-eighth quality setting up in 2023 won’t be adequate to deal with all the facility concerns.
For the duration of public remark, a fifth-grade instructor at Roosevelt, Jennifer Wunrow, said lecture rooms in the making are crowded further than crowded.
“The building is not suited for the execution for our curriculum and the high specifications we have for education and learning in Neenah,” she stated.
A different trainer, KarieAnn Zeinert, agreed with inhabitants that the timeline for the determination to near the school was limited, and she claimed she appreciates the nostalgia for the nearly-100-yr-previous university, but that it’s not a great making. For instance, she explained the weather command in her space as a “catastrophe.”
Other voices supporting the strategy Tuesday night time provided mother and father and teachers from Alliance. Teachers from Alliance claimed that if a conclusion wasn’t built Tuesday night, it would impede the constitution school’s capability to implement for a grant it requires to increase.
The smattering of local community voices who expressed disappointment with how promptly the proposal to near Roosevelt arrived to a vote integrated dad and mom, residents of Doty Island whose youngsters are grown and even people who dwell outside of the district.
Some of them described the timing of the conclusion as a “filthy trick,” primarily supplied how shut the conferences are to the vacations.
1 female informed the board Roosevelt was one of the aspects in her family’s decision to transfer from Texas to Doty Island, specifically.
President Brian Epley stated the board did not sneak the vote onto the calendar and stated that the board cannot regulate its calendar that considerably. He expressed irritation over community responses that people today weren’t knowledgeable because he mentioned the school board will work difficult to get folks engaged, and a few board members live on Doty Island.
“What it arrives down to for me, I’m on the board of education,” mentioned board member Peter Kaul. “This is the best program I have observed to teach all of our children.”
LINDSAY, Calif. — On a morning this fall at Washington Elementary, a young boy, sitting at a table with five of his peers, held a tablet while he built a digital snowman — a cool proposition given the 85-degree heat just outside his air-conditioned classroom.
His neighbor, a girl, whose ponytail was tied with a bright red bow, used her index finger to move shapes around her screen. At another table, a child wearing a rainbow mask bent studiously over her workbook, meticulously coloring with a green marker.
Elsewhere in the classroom, an instructor knelt to chat with two boys engrossed in playing with blocks, while a second teacher supervised a group of five students as they completed worksheets.
Every 4- and 5-year-old in this transitional kindergarten classroom was doing something different, tailored specially to their academic development. It’s a scene that is replicated across the seven elementary schools and two high schools in this agricultural community of around 13,500 in California’s Central Valley.
Students in a transitional kindergarten class at Washington Elementary, a K-8 school in the Lindsay Unified district, work in small groups. Credit: Charlotte West for The Hechinger Report
There are few straight rows of desks at schools in this district, Lindsay Unified. Teachers rarely stand at the front of the classroom. Students instead focus on whatever assignment is next for them — often a task that differs completely from the work being performed by the other kids in the room.
Kids are helped along by access to take-home devices and individualized learning plans that allow them to progress through class material at their own speed.
It’s a model that’s paid dividends for the district. Lindsay Unified has seen significant improvement in academic achievement, graduation rates and the number of students going to college since it created a performance-based system in the mid-2000s. The model also helped students and educators weather the pandemic’s ups and downs more easily than other districts in the country. While the pandemic still took its toll, adapting to online learning was smoother in Lindsay due to its preexisting infrastructure and history of adaptation.
For years, Lindsay has experimented with competency-based education, a more personalized approach to education that involves letting kids learn on computers for at least part of the day. In mid-March 2020, schools in Lindsay Unified shut down in response to the coronavirus pandemic. And, as it did for millions of other students and teachers around the country, instruction went fully online.
But superintendent Tom Rooney likes to say that while facilities closed in Lindsay, “the learning never stopped.”
Now, with learning back in person in many places in the country, Lindsay’s experience keeping kids mostly on track, even during the most chaotic of times, offers lessons to other districts. Teachers in Lindsay are ready to shift from in-person to remote learning with minimal prep time — if a coronavirus outbreak requires a quarantine, for example, or a natural disaster causes school closures.
“With about a day planning, [teachers] shift right into distance learning,” Rooney said.
Students on a break at Lindsay High School. Credit: Charlotte West for The Hechinger Report
Washington Elementary is a K-8 school in Lindsay, an agricultural community in California’s Central Valley. Credit: Charlotte West for The Hechinger Report
Ushering in a new model
Located near the foothills of Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, the town of Lindsay used to be known for two things: olives and oranges. But the community began to suffer economically after several major employers, including what was once the largest olive processer in the world, shut down in the early 1990s.
Today, more than 90 percent of the 4,000 children enrolled in Lindsay Unified are socioeconomically disadvantaged, and about 40 percent are English language learners. Ninety five percent of students in the district are Hispanic.
In 2007, administrators were frustrated by the district’s poor outcomes and low graduation rate. Even its most successful students had difficulties: 8 out of 10 high school valedictorians were placed in remedial English classes when they went to college, according to district officials.
The district convened a series of meetings with teachers, school leaders, parents, city officials and community members to discuss what kind of educational system the community needed. The result was the adoption of “a learner centered, personalized, competency-based” approach that allows students to meet learning goals on their own terms, Rooney said.
Related: Why a high-performing district is changing everything with competency-based learning
The new approach threw out many traditional facets of education such as the A-F grading scale and time-based learning in which students advance to a new grade level each year. Along with the changes came a new vernacular — teachers are “learning facilitators,” students are “learners,” grades are “content levels” and schools are “learning environments.”
Students are scored on a scale of 1-4, with a score of at least 3 needed to show proficiency in a subject. Educators say a 1 or a 2 doesn’t mean students have failed, only that they have more work to do to move on to the next level.
Lindsay High School junior Gaby León said that other students she meets are fascinated when she tells them she’s never received a letter grade. “I’m not familiar with the ABCs, because all my life I’ve gotten numbers,” she said.
Lindsay High School junior Gaby León demonstrates Lindsay Unified’s learning management system, Empower. “You can learn anywhere,” León said. “You can complete assignments on road trips or at an airport.” Credit: Courtesy Gaby León
What is competency-based education?
Lindsay is a forerunner among a growing number of schools and districts across the United States that have adopted a performance- or competency-based approach to education, said Susan Patrick, president and CEO of the Aurora Institute, a nonprofit that studies and promotes competency-based education. (Superintendent Rooney serves on the board of the Aurora Institute.)
Patrick said that 10 years ago, only a handful of states in the United States used competency-based education. Her organization estimates that now 6 to 10 percent of public school districts across the United States are piloting or planning competency-based approaches.
She expects that number will continue to grow in the wake of the pandemic.
“We just saw a shift where getting rid of time and space constraints unleashed a lot of creativity in helping to provide more flexibility for students,” Patrick said. “After the pandemic, the demand is really increasing for school systems around the U.S. to learn how to make the shift from traditional time-based systems … towards one that is truly organized around the learner.”
So, what is competency-based education, exactly?
A student works on developing his own video game in a design class at Lindsay High School. Credit: Charlotte West for The Hechinger Report
It goes by many names, Patrick said, but at its core, the approach enables students to take charge of their own learning while they work towards a common set of learning goals. Students receive meaningful feedback on their progress and receive support until they achieve those goals. They show their mastery of a subject by presenting evidence, such as a paper or project, demonstrating what they know and are able to do.
One of the most frequent criticisms of competency-based education is that it is incredibly time consuming, Patrick said. There’s also little evidence that personalized learning improves student learning, in part because so many different approaches are used.
But educators in Lindsay say that, while there’s more work on the front end, the district’s model actually makes teaching easier in the long run.
Related: Does the future of schooling look like Candy Land?
“Every teacher in the district does what we call a personalized learning plan with each of our students at least twice a year,” said Marla Ernest, a drama and English language arts teacher at Lindsay High School. “I know that sounds like a lot of work, but it really frees up a lot of your planning, because you’re now really doing mini-lessons, instead of having to fill a 90-minute block.”
Matt Diggle is in his 28th year as an educator. After starting as the new principal of Washington Elementary in August, he’s been impressed by how much teachers have to know about their students in Lindsay’s model.
“I came from a grades-based system,” he said. “This requires a lot more depth and knowledge in terms of digging into the learning targets and really understanding [what] the child has to achieve.”
In 2016, Lindsay Unified, a school district in California’s Central Valley, asked the city of Lindsay if the district could locate antennae on the community’s tallest buildings to expand its own network in order to provide free community Wi-Fi. Credit: Courtesy Lindsay Unified School District
The role of technology
Lindsay’s ability to rapidly pivot to remote learning in spring 2020 was largely due to preexisting infrastructure. Unlike many districts where a lack of devices and spotty Wi-Fi made adapting to online learning difficult, almost all Lindsay students already had access to their own tablets or laptops — which are age-appropriate and replaced every three years — and community Wi-Fi.
Getting there wasn’t easy. In the early years of Lindsay’s experiment, few students had internet access at home. “I would come to work at 7 in the morning and there would be 60 kids on the front lawn of the district office because there was a hotspot,” said Barry Sommer, director of the district’s foundation.
After unsuccessfully approaching several major internet companies, the district decided to take matters into its own hands. The district asked the city of Lindsay if it could locate antennae on the community’s tallest buildings to expand the district’s network. Then they installed hotspots on 500 homes in Lindsay. By the end of 2016, almost 90 percent of the district’s students and their families had access to free internet at home.
“There’s always a certain pace that the teachers progress the class at, but with our Empower website, it allows students to progress further in the course by working independently and outside of the class.”
High school senior Connor Dunbar
Today, students are even able to access assignments on their mobile devices. León, the high school junior, held out her phone as she demonstrated how she’s moved through her math class this year. “You can learn anywhere,” she said. “You can complete assignments on road trips or at an airport.”
But educators say that technology by itself isn’t what makes Lindsay’s model work. It’s the combination of its personalized pedagogical approach combined with technology.
The district’s “learning management system,” Empower, is an online dashboard that allows teachers to upload, grade and keep track of assignments for their class. It also contains “playlists,” which might include videos or reading assignments, that students complete as they progress through a class.
Related: What lessons does special education hold for personalized learning?
Students, parents and teachers can log into Empower at any time to check on progress towards finishing a class. At any point, students can see what they’ve completed and what else they need to do to finish a subject. The courses are still based on California state standards, and students continue to complete external assessments such as iReady.
Empower also allows school administrators to pull aggregate reports on students’ pacing — whether and how quickly they are making progress in their respective subject areas.
“We’re able to look at the overall pacing for the learning facilitators and for learners, and then we’re able to dig in deeper if we needed to, to look at individual learners and see what progress they’re making towards completing by the end of the year,” said Jorge Ramos, learning director at Washington Elementary.
Marla Ernest, an English language arts and drama teacher at Lindsay High School, works one-on-one with a student in late September. Credit: Charlotte West for The Hechinger Report
Training the teachers
Most teachers aren’t taught the competency-based approach in college, so there were growing pains when the district first adopted its performance-based model in the mid-2000s, Sommer said. Several teachers left because they could not adapt to the new system, he added.
“Teacher training programs are not preparing teachers for personalized competency-based learning models,” said Patrick, of the Aurora Institute.
In response, the district set up opportunities for professional development, programs that continued during the pandemic. Educators use Empower, the same platform the students use, for their training.
“They take that performance-based approach with us as well,” said Guadalupe Alvarez, who teaches eighth grade. New teachers are also paired with veteran teachers such as Ernest, the English teacher, who help show them the ropes.
Related: How one state’s teachers are sparking digital innovation
Ernest said that teachers have to have the right mindset to be successful in Lindsay. “You do have to have a staff that’s really open to lifelong learning and really open to flowing through change,” Ernest said. “Because in this model, nothing is static, you’re always looking for the best practice. You can’t as a teacher be stuck in ‘This is how I do it.’”
Fourth grade teacher Nelly Lopez said she used to think the perfect classroom was one in which students sat silently with their hands folded and the teacher was the center of attention.
“Now it’s like a full shift into where the focus is on them,” she said. “There’s no one size fits all.”
Drawings in a fourth grade classroom at Washington Elementary, a K-8 school in Lindsay Unified. Credit: Charlotte West for The Hechinger Report
Students move at their own pace, with lots of support
One of the benefits of Lindsay’s approach to teaching and technology is that it accommodates different populations, such as students with disabilities and English language learners. The approach also reduces the stigma for students who might be “behind” in a traditional system because all students work at their own pace, whether they move ahead quickly or need extra help.
One of district’s early lessons, however, was that there is a delicate balance between letting kids do their own thing — and keeping them on track. Teachers still must make sure that students don’t fall behind.
John Woods, Lindsay’s director of special education, said it’s important to set incremental deadlines so students don’t wait until the last minute to try and finish everything. “We say we’re not time-based, [but] you have to have urgency,” he said. “There are certain kids that are very self-directed, but there are others that are not, if you just leave them to their own devices.”
Depending on the subject, students might work independently or move to another class with a different teacher. Within each class, students are grouped based on the learning targets they are trying to reach and their progress towards meeting those targets.
The system also helps accommodate students who are moving faster than their peers. “There’s always a certain pace that the teachers progress the class at, but with our Empower website, it allows students to progress further in the course by working independently and outside of the class,” said high school senior Connor Dunbar.
“After the pandemic, the demand is really increasing for school systems around the U.S. to learn how to make the shift from traditional time-based systems … towards one that is truly organized around the learner.”
Susan Patrick, president of the Aurora Institute
Alvarez said that whenever she has “fast runners,” she meets with administrators to come up with the best plan to meet students’ academic needs. “I have had groups of eighth graders that go to the high school for math and English and then they just come back to me for their subject matter in history as science,” she said.
León was able to take extra classes by completing her history class in one semester. “That allowed me to add a college class to my schedule for the following semester,” she said.
Ernest said she teaches three English classes, each at a different level, with students in each class grouped according to the progress they’ve made towards a learning target. She still gives short 15- to 20-minute lessons on topics that are applicable to the entire class, but then spends the rest of class period working with students in small groups or one-on-one.
“I’m still doing the same amount of grading that I’ve always done,” she said. “It doesn’t create more work. It just creates different work.”
Parent Jennifer Keeton, who works in the district’s financial services division, said that Lindsay’s model has helped meet the needs of both her children. Her son, who graduated in 2020, has autism. “With everybody being customized … it helped him not stick out,” she said.
Keeton’s daughter is a junior, currently on track to earn her associate’s degree from the College of the Sequoias, a community college, before she graduates from high school next year. Keeton said the system helped her daughter “because she didn’t get stuck waiting for everyone else to finish, because she was an avid reader … She was always finishing things fast, but she was allowed to work on other projects to give her a higher understanding of the concepts.”
Students in an eighth grade class at Washington Elementary, a K-8 school, work in small groups. Credit: Charlotte West for The Hechinger Report
Does it work?
Test scores leaped in Lindsay Unified after the district implemented competency-based learning. The number of students proficient on California’s academic standards increased from 26 percent in 2014-15 to 47 percent in 2018-19. Graduation rates rose from 69 percent in 2010-11 to 90 percent in 2017-18. College-going rates increased from 66 percent to 70 percent, and more students are going to four-year colleges, according to district data.
During the pandemic, the results were more mixed — teachers and students felt the same stresses that all districts faced, including a significant toll on social and emotional health. But Lindsay students still made progress in math and reading, although less than during a normal school year.
In March 2020, after curriculum experts gave teachers a weekend crash course in online instruction, students and teachers were back in school fulltime, in their virtual classrooms, within just a few days. They quickly learned to avoid all-day online classes in favor of small group work and one-on-one attention from teachers, something they’d already been doing in person before the pandemic.
Bins for students’ personal items in a transitional kindergarten class at Washington Elementary. Credit: Charlotte West for The Hechinger Report
And in the early weeks of the pandemic, the district had to boost its Wi-Fi connections as more kids and parents were suddenly online 24/7, Rooney said.
A year into the pandemic, Lindsay students had less growth in reading than in previous years, but — particularly among younger learners — still made more progress than their peers in other districts around the country with similar demographics, according to a recent report from the non-profit Learning Accelerator.
“We saw a lot less growth for kids in upper grade levels than we did for those in lower grade levels,” said Beth Rabbitt, CEO of the Learning Accelerator and one of the authors of the report. This could be because older students were more likely to have responsibilities such as working or taking care of younger siblings, according to the study.
The study also found that students classified as English learner, migrant, or homeless, and those receiving special education services, saw positive growth, thanks to frequent contact with counselors, translation services, access to a food pantry and social services and opportunities for an “early return” to school in fall 2020.
And students who came back in person as part of the early return model did better than their peers who remained at home, which could serve as a lesson when future disruptions occur. These kids continued with the same online curriculum as their peers studying from home, but worked at school in small groups with tutors who could give them extra support.
“That speaks to the power of kids having adults who, even if they’re not the primary content teachers, can be helping them connect and helping them stay on track.” Rabbitt said.
In Lindsay, “the learning never stopped.”
Superintendent Tom Rooney
Ernest said the switch to remote learning was especially hard for the recent immigrants she works with. “Trying to get them to a place where they can follow along with a computer when they’ve never had one, it was very difficult for the first few months,” Ernest said.
But after students got used to the technology, she said, the program was “the perfect model for someone who is just learning the language.” Some of her high school students started at a kindergarten level in English, but because they didn’t know they were beginning at such a basic level, they were able “to move at the right level, make progress and not feel ashamed about that,” she said.
Overall, the pandemic reinforced the role of competency-based learning and technology-based teaching in Lindsay, said Ernest. “We’ve been doing blended learning in this model for so long, the only difference for us was that [students] weren’t in a room with us.”
This story about adapting to online learning was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Schooling veteran Lori Clark was selected as the new superintendent of the Victor Elementary University District, with its 18 universities in Victorville.
Clark will step into her new function productive Feb. 1, as she replaces Superintendent Jan Gonzales who will retire following 25 a long time with the VESD and 9 a long time in her recent placement.
“I am thrilled about the possibility to keep on to do the job with our pupils, personnel, and families,” mentioned Clark, in a created assertion. “We have a superb group in this article at VESD and in Victorville. I search ahead to strengthening our commitment to steady improvement by means of collaboration with our neighborhood.”
The VESD board of trustees voted unanimously to decide on Clark to guide VESD soon after an extensive look for that included applicants from across the condition vying for the position, district officers stated.
Board President Allen Williams stated, “Lori Clark’s confirmed success in boosting student achievement for all learners has been a hallmark of her job at VESD. Her eyesight, passion, and power for the good results of just about every child make her marketing to superintendent the continuation of the development we’ve produced, of the tradition that defines us, and the custom of excellence that we aspire to.”
Clark has been with VESD for 29 many years and commenced her job as a classroom instructor for 12 yrs before getting the principal of Brentwood Elementary on Hook Boulevard.
She then continued as assistant superintendent of pupil providers and is currently serving as the assistant superintendent of academic expert services.
Clark attained her master’s degree and administrative providers credential from Chapman College. She holds a bachelor of arts degree and a California educating credential from California Point out College, San Bernardino.
Jan Gonzales
Gonzales is at the moment the superintendent of VESD, serving more than 12,000 college students and 1,000 workers. She has put in her whole career in education at the district, beginning as a 6th-quality trainer and later on instructing 1st and 2nd grades.
She was the initially principal of Galileo Academy and then assistant superintendent of administrative services just before starting to be superintendent.
Gonzales is a Countrywide Board-Licensed trainer and has been honored as the VESD and San Bernardino County Teacher of the Calendar year.
She attended Victor Valley Higher education for her associate degree, California Condition College, San Bernardino for her bachelor’s degree and Chapman University for her training credential, administrator credential and master’s diploma.
Jan and her husband, Victor, moved to the Victor Valley in 1984 wherever they lifted their five small children. She presently has seven grandchildren with an eighth on the way.
Daily Push reporter Rene Ray De La Cruz may well be reached at 760-951-6227 or [email protected]. Abide by him on Instagram @RenegadeReporter and Twitter @DP_ReneDeLaCruz
A tiny school district in California is setting up a separate in-person instructional program for its unvaccinated students, courting a showdown with the biggest state in the country and a tussle over the legal limits of how schools can respond to the COVID-19 crisis.
The Alpine Union school district’s plan, the first of its kind in the country, is designed to save its unvaccinated students from losing face-to-face instruction when the state’s K-12 vaccine mandate—also the only one of its kind in the nation—goes into effect, for some grades as early as July.
In this small K-8 district, in the foothills east of San Diego, where “choice” is a rallying cry that dominates the COVID vaccine debate, district leaders estimate that 40 percent or more of the 1,500 students aren’t inoculated against the virus.
“I’m not opposed to vaccines. I got the vaccine and the booster, too,” said Alpine’s superintendent, Rich Newman. “But I feel I should represent my community, and overwhelmingly, they’re believers in choice. I don’t want some students falling through the cracks because of the state’s vaccine mandate.”
Alpine’s dilemma reflects a question district leaders across the country are facing, said Dan Domenech, the executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents’ Association: What kind of education should they provide for children whose parents won’t get them vaccinated?
California is the only state so far to add COVID-19 inoculations to the longstanding list of other vaccinations required for in-person school attendance, such as measles, mumps and rubella. The mandate will take effect in phases, when federal officials grant full approval for the vaccine’s use in each age group. Currently, COVID vaccines are fully approved only for those 16 and older. Younger children can receive them under an emergency-use authorization.
Once California’s requirement kicks in, families of unvaccinated students—other than those with state-approved exemptions—will have three choices: private school, home schooling, or “independent study,” a learn-from-home option offered by the state.
The predicament Alpine faces is likely to arise nationwide. Louisiana announced this week that it will require the COVID vaccine for school attendance. Five districts in California already require it. And at least a dozen districts around the country require the vaccine for some students, typically student-athletes.
Some districts have conducted short-lived experiments aimed at serving both masked and unmasked students by teaching them in separate rooms, but they quickly abandoned those practices. No district has yet tried a separate program for unvaccinated students.
In-person program for unvaccinated students could violate law
The California governor’s office signaled that any district that sets up separate in-person instruction for unvaccinated students would run afoul of its orders.
“If you do in-person instruction, you need to abide by the vaccine mandate,” said Alex Stack, a spokesman for Gov. Gavin Newsom.
County health departments will be tasked with enforcing the vaccine mandate, Stack said. Legal experts said the state also has the authority to seek a court order to shut down school programs that violate state law.
“I don’t think California will allow a school district to create a separate program for unvaccinated students. If it violates state law, a judge is going to shut that down,” said James Hodge, a professor of law at Arizona State University and director of its Center for Public Health Law.
Courts have upheld challenges to vaccine mandates in higher education, and last weekend marked a key ruling for such requirements in K-12. On Dec. 5, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld San Diego Unified school district’s vaccine requirement. Hodge said that would buttress other California districts that enact such rules.
Parents drove creation of new program
Alpine’s planned “choice academy” is drawing both applause and condemnation locally. The district’s Facebook page became a hotbed of disagreement when Newman, the superintendent, posted a letter announcing the academy on Nov. 22. He returned to work after Thanksgiving to find voicemails accusing him of being a Nazi and a segregationist.
But many parents and district staff members are cheering the academy. They commend the district for respecting all viewpoints in this predominantly conservative community and trying to ensure unvaccinated students get a quality education.
“I’m grateful we have a superintendent who wants to work alongside us parents instead of against us,” said Jalissa Hukee, whose two children have all their required vaccines except COVID. “Without the academy, I’d pull my kids out and home-school.”
Hukee is one of a group of parents helping Newman design the program. This fall, after Newsom announced the coming vaccine mandate, Newman invited their ideas. The parents gathered around a friend’s kitchen table and brainstormed an early outline.
There is still a lot to figure out. The district is working with its teachers’ and classified employees’ unions on how to staff the programs, and what safety protocols will be required. They don’t yet know whether they’ll mix the age groups, one-room-schoolhouse style, or divvy children up into grade bands. They have to find ways to preserve the district’s vaunted engineering and dual-language programs, and how to meet the needs of special education students in the new, separate setting.
Home schooling isn’t an option for some working parents
And they’re still looking for a good location: parents have eagerly offered living rooms and garages, but Newman is leaning toward keeping students together in a larger space, such as a community center or office building. But even an unfinished plan is finding a hero’s welcome among some parents.
“Thank God for the academy, because we can’t home-school,” said Jessica Dombroski, whose four children attend Alpine schools while she runs a dog-grooming business and her husband works as a paramedic. She and her children are unvaccinated, and she’s been scrambling to create a home-school pod with other families. Instead, she’ll opt for the choice academy.
Beacon Grayson has vaccinated her two daughters against COVID, and is eager for the state vaccine mandate to go into effect. But she’s happy the district is working to provide an alternative for parents who have not vaccinated their children.
“The district is doing what it can to straddle the divide between parents like me and parents who are ‘no vaccine,’” she said. “It’s caught in a really tough situation.”
Nearly 90 percent of Alpine’s staff is vaccinated for COVID; the rest undergo weekly testing. Yvette Maier, the district’s director of human resources, said many teachers have expressed an interest in teaching in the new academy, especially those who are unvaccinated. The district aims to iron out all details of the program by June, when families begin registering for fall 2021, she said.
New program is ‘asking for a COVID outbreak’
Lauren Weinberg, a 5th grade teacher who’s in her second year in Alpine, thinks the new program is an “incredibly unsafe” option, both for students and staff members.
“Putting a bunch of unvaccinated people in one area, it’s asking for a COVID outbreak,” she said. “You won’t catch me stepping foot on that campus.”
Weinberg worries that the choice academy will enable more families to forgo vaccination. But for others, that’s precisely the point.
“Without this academy, a lot of families will be forced to get the vaccine when they don’t want to,” said Erica Lyle, the dean of students at Alpine’s Shadow Hills Elementary. “We want to let families make their own choices.”
Districts risk legal challenges if they set up such programs, however, legal experts said.
In addition to possible shutdown by the state or by county health departments, they could face lawsuits for breaching a key legal standard: their duties to protect students from foreseeable danger, and to provide a safe and healthy workplace for staff, said Meredith Karasch, senior counsel at Liebert Cassidy Whitmore, a Los Angeles-based law firm that advises school districts.
“I’d tell districts to think very carefully about the issues before putting something like this into place,” she said.
DUNLAP (Heart of Illinois ABC) – The Department of Justice has reached a settlement pursuant to the Americans with Disabilities Act with Dunlap #323 ensuring that the playground at Banner Elementary School is accessible to all children, including children with disabilities.
A DOJ release says the settlement agreement resolves an ADA complaint filed by parents of a child with a disability at Banner Elementary.
The complaint alleges that a child with a disability was routinely unable to access the school’s existing playground to play with peers and had to play alone, outside of the play area and separate from peers without disabilities.
The DOJ says this complaint prompted an investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ.
Title II of the ADA prohibits places of public accommodation, including school districts, from discriminating against individuals with disabilities and requires them to remove architectural barriers to access. The ADA requires a school’s outdoor playgrounds to be readily accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities.
Under the settlement agreement, the school district has agreed to create a new outdoor playground by integrating new, accessible equipment into the existing area, effectively creating a single outdoor playground with accessible equipment and surfaces. As part of the agreement, the district will also remove all existing barriers to access, including railroad ties and other barriers, as well as remove and replace all existing pea gravel and mulch with ADA-compliant surfaces.
Without admitting violating the ADA, the district also agreed to a monetary payment to the parents fully resolving the matter.
“Children and other individuals with disabilities are entitled to full access to our community, including a school’s playground,” said Douglas J. Quivey, Acting United States Attorney for the Central District of Illinois. “This settlement demonstrates the Dunlap Community School District’s commitment to providing equal access to all students it serves. We appreciate both the parents and the School District’s cooperation in resolving this matter and their dedication to ensuring all students enjoy full access. I encourage all school districts in Central Illinois to review their facilities to make sure they are accessible and fully usable by all.”
Copyright 2021 Heart of Illinois ABC. All rights reserved.
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/NSN56W6LIVBTJIUWWJAIWTLMX4.jpg "DOJ, Dunlap school district reach agreement to provide fully accessible elementary school playground")