Technology center to start school year with mix of classes

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has led to a strange and complicated start to the new school year.

In Berks County, only the Hamburg School District is beginning 2020-21 fully in-person. The other 17 districts are kicking off classes fully online or with some sort of a mix of in-person and virtual lessons.

For a school that serves 16 of Berks’ 18 districts, weaving together all those approaches is a tall task. But that’s exactly what leaders at the Berks Career and Technology Center had to do.

The result is a somewhat complex schedule that blends in-person and virtual learning that varies depending on what home

school a student attends.

For every district except Daniel Boone, BCTC students will attend class in-person at least twice a week. In Daniel Boone students will be split into two groups and attend in-person on alternating weeks, mirroring the schedule being used in the district.

Hamburg and Twin Valley students will attend inperson every day, and Gov. Mifflin students will attend just morning sessions at BCTC every day.

Students from other school districts will have schedules where they’re in class twice a week and learning virtually three days a week.

Start dates vary depending on a student’s home district, ranging from Wednesday to Sept. 3.

“In a nutshell, the BCTC Return to Learning Plan is designed to provide a student schedule to be responsive when a sending district pivots between delivery models at any time this school year,” said Dr. Jim Kraft, BCTC executive director. “We have two main goals: To provide a safe learning environment for our students and staff and to preserve at least two days per week for in-person instruction with three days of virtual online instruction.”

Kraft said virtual lessons will be synchronous and asynchronous.

“In other words, some of the lessons will be livestreamed and others will be prerecorded and teachers will have advertised office hours for students to ask questions,” he said. “We are leaving the instructional delivery format within the on-line environment up to the teachers as each program is different as well as the curriculum.”

The school purchased high-definition webcams for instructors over the summer through a state grant, Kraft added.

While Kraft said instructors are prepared to provide learning online — something they got a lot of practice doing when schools across the state were shut down in mid-March by Gov. Tom Wolf to slow the spread of COVID-19 — he acknowledged the nature of a career and technology center doesn’t really lend itself well to that.

The center’s programs offer hands-on experiences for students, something

BCTC officials wanted to maintain.

“That is why, currently, we are preserving at least two days per week of inperson learning,” Kraft said. “When the students are on campus they will be almost entirely doing hands-on work, with the virtual, online work mainly theory and research or practice, depending upon the curriculum.”

When students are on campus at BCTC, they will see some changes. The school, like others across the state who are reopening for in-person instruction, have implemented a COVID-19 health and safety plan.

The plan includes procedures and protocols like deep cleanings and sanitization of the classrooms, discontinued use of water fountains, use of hand sanitizer and increasing ventilation.

It also states that all students and staff must wear masks or face shields — a state mandate — will practice social distancing, will have staggered arrivals and departures, and will eat lunches in classrooms instead of the cafeteria.

To read BCTC’s full health and safety plan go to berkscareer.com/ Page/618.

As far as how students will get to BCTC for inperson classes, BCTC will be sending buses to home high schools, as it has in the past.

Districts are communicating with students to make arrangements for getting them to and from the home high schools in cases where the home district is not providing its own in-person instruction, Kraft said.

“This depends on the district,” Kraft said. “Some are providing transportation and others are relying on parents.”

Kraft said BCTC has relaxed driving regulations to allow more students to drive to and from school.