TEAMS PLAN for schools’ fall reopening.
Education secretary notes changes on way for schools
Teams of Arkansas school district administrators and teachers are working on plans for the reopening of the state’s school campuses for the 2020-21 school year, Arkansas Education Secretary Johnny Key said last week.
“It’s going to look different,” Key said about schools during a recent virtual town hall presentation hosted by the Reform Alliance organization.
His staff later said in an emailed response to questions that at least one part of that work — “a playbook with model plans to address student learning” — is set for release by May 18.
In mid-March, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson closed school buildings to the state’s more than 470,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade to slow the spread of the coronavirus that causes the covid-19 infection. School buildings must remain closed for the rest of this school year, which ends in mid- to late May, depending on the district.
It is the governor’s desire that elementary and secondary schools and higher-education institutions return to campus operation for the coming 2020-21 school year, Key said.
But some operational changes will be needed because of the pandemic, he said, just as changes were necessary after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in New York City, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.
“What do we need to do from a safety perspective and a health perspective?” he asked. “Are those things worked out yet? No,” he said, answering his own question.
“But I know we have a lot of people working on national, regional and local levels — working through our educational service cooperative partners, working with our school partners — to try to identify what those things are that need to happen. What kind of personal protective equipment do we need to have on hand? What type of schedule are we looking at? Full-blown activities? That doesn’t mean there won’t be some precautions.”
In particular, teams of educators, including teachers from across the state, are working to determine how best to move forward with the learning that was interrupted this year when the school buildings closed, he said.
“How do we go into the next school year to address the unfinished learning that so many kids have suffered from because of this interruption?” Key asked. “I’m really excited about how that’s going to look because it is teachers who are actually developing this. This isn’t the Education Department personnel.”
“These are teams of teachers … asking what is it that we want our kids to know and to be able to do,
and how are we going to know if they know it, and if they don’t know it what are we going to do,” he said.
At the state Education Department, the educators putting together the “playbook” for school operations and student learning are known as the Statewide Guiding Coalition. It was formed in April.
“The educators are the ‘boots on the ground’ [for] developing assessment tools needed to determine student learning gaps,” Kimberly Mundell, a spokeswoman for the Division of Elementary and Secondary Education, said in an email.
Asked about the identities of the participating team members, Mundell said the educators working on the recommendations are going to put together some biographical information so they can be recognized for their work.