McGee says city ready to roll out plan to students
WOONSOCKET — With public schools expected to be closed for at least the next few weeks under Gov. Gina M. Raimondo’s coronavirus (COVID-19) prevention orders, the Woonsocket Education Department will now start up a just created plan for students to learn at home, School Superintendent Patrick McGee said on Wednesday.
School department staff have been working non-stop on a distance learning plan since Raimondo moved up spring vacation for students last Friday and should have everything in place to go when the home schooling program begins next week.
“We definitely have never experienced anything like this before, but we’re all in the same boat,” McGee said of the dramatic changes in life wrought by the coronavirus crisis thus far.
R.I. Commissioner of Education Angélica Infante-Green had set a deadline for districts to submit their district learning plans for review by Wednesday afternoon and McGee said Woonsocket would have its plan ready.
“We are putting the finishing touches on it today. I’m going to be sending the draft to RIDE later this afternoon and we will get their feedback tomorrow,” McGee said.
McGee said after approval of the plan, he would be forwarding it to all the school district’s administrators who have worked on it, “and to our teachers and staff and then to our parents.”
A letter to parents explaining the learn-at-home program would be going out to parents tomorrow afternoon, he added.
The local district has 6,000 students and over 500 teachers and support staff and McGee said he will be expecting all students and teachers to do their part in making distance learning a
success in the days ahead.
“The expectation is that all students, all teachers are participating and that is the expectation because after this week, it is no longer vacation week,” McGee said. “Those days are counted toward the 180 days that kids have to come to school and teachers work,” McGee said of the coming week in the school calendar.
Making sure everyone has the necessary equipment access the learning curriculum and to participate has been an initial priority and McGee said that school department has plans for that going into place as a first step.
“With respect to staff, it is a little easier because all of our staff were issued Chromebooks with our technology infrastructure being improved over the last three years,” McGee said. “All of our teachers and all of our support staff have Chromebooks,” he noted.
A second concern is whether they have access through WiFi connections at home and McGee said the school department has been reaching out to staff to make sure that they do. If they don’t, the school department’s technology staff will be working on how that access can be provided, he said.
“So with respect to our staff, they should be fine,” McGee said.
The access for students, is a different issue because although the district has implemented a one-on-one Chromebook policy for students at the high school and middle schools over the past three years, the elementary level does not yet have a one-on-one ratio and some equipment is shared.
At the secondary level, there is also an issue with how students can get their Chromebooks since school was closed last week with short notice and not all students at the high school may have taken their Chromebooks home and middle school students do not normally take them out of school, he noted.
To address that concern, the school technology staff have been collecting Chromebooks at the schools and will be setting up a distribution at schools for students to pick them up at the beginning of next week, McGee said.
All of the Chromebooks will be sanitized as part of the preparations for the distribution and will be give out according to their respective clever badges assigning them to a specific student at the start of the school year.
“So we are in the process of putting together a distribution plan where early next week, and we will be getting this information out to staff and parents by the end of this week, they can go to certain locations and pick up their devices,” McGee said.
The distribution will be operated in the same manner the school district is currently providing students with “grab and go” meals at school such as the Hamlet Middle School on Florence Drive, he noted.
“And it won’t be just one day, it will be multiple days, different times, so we can get as many of them distributed to our students, and it is going to be fluid, also, throughout the course of next week.” he said. “It’s not going to be just one or two days, it will be over a period of time,” McGee noted.
The access to technology will be “a little more challenging” at the elementary level, he noted, since there isn’t a Chromebook for each student.
“If they have devices at home, they can use the device at home like say a computer or even a phone, which is not the greatest but it’s possible, or a tablet,” McGee said.
The school department will be using a variety of blended learning platforms like Google Classroom, that students should be able to access those from the available devices, he noted.
As for the curriculum itself, McGee said at the elementary level “we are looking at fluency activities, reading fluency and comprehension, for our k through 2 students.
“We’re going to be using the Fundations program that we have for phonics. We are going to be utilizing Eureka Math programs that we have, and then science and social studies with incorporating a writing element into that as well,” McGee said.
The district will also have itinerant teachers working on putting together assignments for students in art music and physical education, he noted.
“This is going to be fluid also. We are going to submit our plan to RIDE by the end of the day today but that doesn’t mean that we’re not going to make changes to it along the way. There will probably be somethings that as we evaluate how it is working, that we add to it. There might be somethings that we eliminate from it that aren’t working, as well,” he said.
Also at the elementary level, McGee said the department would be providing hard copy packets of work projects that would be distributed to families in the same way that the Chromebooks are distributed.
“I’ve sent out a letter today right after the Governor made her announcement of the additional two weeks and in the letter that I sent out today, I included in there that they will be hearing from me by the end of the day tomorrow with respect to what the plan is going to look like,” McGee said.
“They are also going to be hearing from teachers-- the teachers will be reaching out to their individual students by way of email, by way of Google Classroom, and any other other types or modes of communication,” McGee said while noting teachers will have contact with their students directly on a daily basis.
The learning program at the elementary level will be designed to reinforce skills and at the secondary level, there will be more of the school’s curriculum content being pushed out through Google Classroom, through Google Hangout, sites, he noted. “And it is going to be getting more content as we move along,” McGee said.
As for hours for learning, McGee said the department is telling teachers to consider it a normal school day with consideration of not starting at “7:25 and go to 2,” but that they will be “providing these lessons to their students and they need to be monitoring throughout the day by way of Google Classroom, Google Hangout and by email in case students have questions or anything like that,” McGee said.
“So although there is not a set hourly schedule, they do have to be on everyday and they do have be on multiple times during the day,” McGee said.
As to how he thinks the distant learning project will pan out, McGee said “we’ll see.
“Obviously, we have never done this before and it’s not like we had this plan in a drawer somewhere. We literally put this plan together since really we started last Friday. So we’ve never done anything like this before. I don’t think that any districts anywhere, have done anything like this before,” he said.
But McGee said he was encouraged that “we have a lot of people who have been working tirelessly since last week putting it together, it’s not an easy thing to put together. It’s just incredibly intricate and complicated.
“There things that I am sure we are going to think of next week that we didn’t think of leading up to this where we say ‘gosh I can’t believe we forgot that,” he said.
“So it’s a fluid plan and I think we have some very, very bright staff that have been working on this and I think our plan is going to be a very good plan,” he said.
“Ultimately, what it is going to come down to though, is that students have access to it, and they will, and they are going to have to do it. It is not a vacation,” McGee said.
“The expectation is that they are going to be working on this just like they would normally be working if they were in school,” he said.
“And the same thing with our staff. The expectation is that students and staff are going to be on this daily because this is taking the place of our school year. We are not making these days up so everyone has to do their part and everyone has to be responsible. And if they are, I think we will be okay,” McGee said.
McGee admitted “when you look at it, this is not like have a teacher in front of you but it is the best that we can do in light of these circumstances.”
The district may find that the program works better than anticipated, he noted “but we will find out when we start next week.”
The distribution of equipment and hard copy materials will likely take up Monday and Tuesday, he noted and for the most part the program should begin fully on Wednesday.
“We have some people who have been working extremely hard, literally around the clock to put together what I think is going to be a very, very good distance learning plan,” McGee said.