KAIROS RETURNS FOR IN-PERSON LEARNING
After seven whole months of students learning from home, the Kairos Public Schools Vacaville Academy was once again bustling with students, albeit with social distancing protocols in place.
Kairos resumed in-person classes Tuesday for students who wished to return, which amounted to about 78 percent of them. Despite the fact that it was 10 weeks into the school year on a brisk October morning, there was definitely the feeling of a back-to-school day, complete with Kairos’ middle school ambassadors welcoming back the younger students with signs.
There were also indicators that this year on campus would begin differently than previous years, such as barriers at the desks, shorter recesses and a socially distanced physical education class where students did their stretches while spaced 6 feet apart.
While many school districts continue to decide upon how and when to return students to their classrooms amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Kairos — an independent charter school — has become the first public school in Solano County to become open for distance learning, Executive Director Jared Austin said.
“It’s awesome to see the kids on campus and see the excitement that they have,” he said. “We know in-person learning is what’s best for kids, so we’re excited to lead the way.”
Austin said the school submitted eight surveys to families, and the number of families who wished to return to campus was consistently between 75 and 80 percent, a result that was shared
by staff as well. As a result, the school formed committees of parents, teachers and administrators to develop a reopening plan, which was approved by Solano County Public Health. In July, Kairos’ Board of Directors unanimously voted to reopen at the start of the school year. However, a few days later, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced new criteria that prevented that from happening.
“Our board and our families were committed that, as soon as we were allowed to open, we were gonna open,” Austin said.
However, a state elementary school waiver was approved for Kairos Oct. 1, which has applied the waiver toward the entire school since it is a K-8 institution. Austin said the school has also met weekly with Dr. Bela Matyas, Solano’s public health director, for guidance and advice for how to safely reopen.
Students were given the option to either return to classes Tuesday or continue distance learning from their homes until at least January. Austin said 78 percent of students opted to return to campus, while the other 22 percent chose to resume learning from home. The former group has been dubbed “Roomies,” while the latter are referred to as “Zoomies” who are able to access the in- class instruction from their homes through Zoom.
To make it easier for remote learners to Zoom into classrooms, Austin said staff purchased 65-inch TVs for all the classrooms and webcams that he nicknamed “Johnny Eyeball” for teachers to move around and enable Zoom students to see anything in the classroom the teachers want them to see. The Zoom sessions are also mirrored from the teachers’ computers onto the large monitors so they can be visible to the entire class.
The in-person classes also have their own protocols. The school partnered with Pacific Ace Hardware to construct a prototype barrier consisting of PVC pipes, plastic screens, hot glue and duct tape. The barriers are placed at each desk and divided four ways so that students can be separated from one another and also not have their masks on all day, Austin said.
Additionally, the school purchased air purifiers for every room and installed hand sanitizer dispensers next to every door, and staff have been training them to use them when entering or exiting a room.
After interacting with her students through Zoom for the first nine weeks of the school year, fifth-grade teacher Jenna Bauer said she was pleased to see them in person.
“I’ve only known them as 2-D people,” she said. “A lot of them are taller than I expected.”
Bauer said she was already using Google Classroom, so she was easily able to adjust to the new technology — and kids have picked up some new tricks too.
“They’re actually using their email, which is something they always have had but they’ve really used,” she said. “That’s kind of fun to email with students back and forth.”
Eden Ingraham, a student in Bauer’s class, said she was very excited to be back on campus.
“It’s a lot different, especially when we have plastic shields,” she said.
Having been on Zoom since March, Eden said she was looking forward to seeing her classmates in person which she believes will be very helpful for projects.
“You can see people and not be on a computer screen all day,” she said.
Other changes include bringing classes out in cohorts for recess and lunch, where students will be eating and playing with people from their same classrooms rather than intermixing with different classes as had been done in the past. When walking outside, students are taught to be “zombie walkers” where students extend their arms out to keep a distance from the students in front of them.
Austin said students will meet in person or online from 8:15 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, and all students will be partaking in online learning on Fridays. Between 3 and 4:15 p.m., teachers will host office hours where they can have one- on- one meetings with “Zoomies” and their parents.
Additionally, Austin said in-person students could switch to Zoom if they wanted to but Zoom students could not switch to inperson learning until January. They would just need to sign up by December.
Should another wave of COVID outbreaks occur later in the year, Austin said the school had a plan to address every scenario.
“If we need to switch to distance learning, we can switch in an instant,” he said. “We bought every kid their own Chromebook, so they take their Chromebooks home with them every day because we never know if tomorrow we’re gonna close. We want them to have their devices.”
Austin said the surveys indicated that parents felt Zoom was working well, but students missed the human interaction that came with being on campus. As a result, he said the school came up with a plan that would allow students who have missed interacting with their peers to do so while also giving families who were uncomfortable with returning the option to stay home.
“My hope is that our students see that we’re leading with courage, not being guided by fear,” he said. “We’ve got cautions in place to help.”