Upper Darby goes digital as schools close indefinitely
The Upper Darby School District’s digital learning platform came online this week through the social networking service Schoology, though it was not without some fits and starts.
Schools Superintendent Dr. Daniel P. McGarry reported the system was “a little overwhelmed” Monday as Upper Darby and districts across the world strained its resources, but it was back up and running as of Tuesday.
“Communication is always going to be the key,” said McGarry. “We can’t control the network from home to home and obviously we can’t control the server where this information is stored, but we can control how we communicate and our expectations of our staff and kids. The message I want to communicate is: Be patient, we’re going to work through this together.”
Upper Darby’s online instruction – which is aimed at reaching 12,500 to 13,000 students – booted up just in time for Gov. Tom Wolf to announce that schools would remain closed indefinitely. McGarry said the district had planned to return to its brick-and-mortar classrooms April 10, after spring break, but will now continue to use online learning tools until the end of the month and await further instruction from the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
McGarry said the district is cognizant not only of the fact that parents might be working from home, but also that they might have students in different grade levels. With that in mind, he said, asynchronous instruction has been staggered throughout the week and assignments do not have to be turned in until Friday, so students and parents are not overwhelmed with three or four hours of work every single day per student in each subject area.
“You might have one piece of technology at home – some families have one computer – and having to log in live, you’ve got to space out time with your kids, and if you’re trying to work from home on top of that, that’s an added stress,” he said. “We’re not here to fail kids, we’re not here to punish anybody. We’re here to be as much of a positive influence on your kids every single day in this atmosphere as we can.”
The district has so far provided 2,500 to 2,600 Chromebooks to students to help alleviate some of that stress. There are 8,000 such devices in the district and the district is looking to distribute even more over spring break.
“Which may mean we may not have any laptops left in our buildings,” he said. “The concern though, is if school gets turned back on – which, who knows when that’s going to happen – we rely on this technology to run our daily instruction in our buildings, so now it’s trying to turn around and get back thousands of pieces of technology, clean them, get them charged, get them ready to go, and that will be tough as well. So it’s a balancing act. But we’re going to try to get out as much technology to our community so they can have the best opportunity that they can.”
While there are going to be hurdles to overcome with any of these efforts, McGarry said they all point to a need to reexamine and reevaluate what schooling should look like in the 21st century. He hopes this will be a wake-up call to properly fund public education going forward and ensure districts have the technology needed to provide exceptional instruction to every student, everywhere.
“We are far from perfect in our efforts to execute this, but I think it says a lot for a school district that is woefully underfunded – is underfunded by millions of dollars every single year, that has over 80 different languages, 12,500 students or more – what we’re pulling off here is a compliment to the teachers and the administration and the board of school directors in Upper Darby that we’re even up and running, considering how woefully underfunded we are,” he said. “This crisis is forcing everyone’s hand to do the best they can to pull it off, but what’s going to matter most is not how we respond during the crisis. We’re in it, we’re handling it; it’s what we do. When the dust settles, how do we move forward after this? How can we take this and improve after it? Let’s get through this the best way we can, then build a system that is ready to handle this no matter what.”
McGarry said the saddest part for the district in all of this is seniors who have worked their entire educational career to get to a payoff of proms, graduation ceremonies, athletic and academic scholarships and more, all of which are now very much up in the air.
Meanwhile, the district is working to continue providing social workers, guidance counselors and mental health services through online systems, all while passing out an average 1,285 meals per day to families, free of charge.
“People are working an unbelievable amount of hours, responding to emails, communicating with students, to support kids,” he said. “And I think that’s a positive. We all have families and we’re all trying to pull this off. …Our goal is to provide the best opportunities we can to every single student. And wherever there’s issues or concerns, a simple email and communication back and forth to work together to try to solve these problems is the best solution. Getting frustrated with one another, I think, only exacerbates the crisis that we’re in right now. I just hope that we can all remain calm and patient and focus on working together to solve these problems and provide the best we can for our students.”