MPUSD to start with distance learning
After last week looking at proposals that included having elementary school students returning to class four days a week, the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District board voted unanimously Tuesday to start the school year with full distance learning, while targeting a phased-in return to class under a hybrid learning model by October.
Superintendent PK Diffenbaugh cited a lack of access to COVID-19 testing and turnaround time for tests, a lack of direct contact with health professionals who can provide real-time guidance and a high level of community spread as reasons he recommended the board vote to start the year with distance learning.
“For me, I had to shift in thinking about schools in a larger context,” Diffenbaugh told The Herald Wednesday. “We were prepared to do everything within our power around the protocols and the hygiene schedule and the distancing, but the reality is we are in a larger context that does not have the pieces in place that would allow us to open in a safe way.”
The district received 139 public comments before the meeting.
“If we were to get to all of them, it would be about six hours,” board President Tom Jennings said.
Of the comments, 99 were in support of starting the year with full distance learning. The board decided to limit comments read to one minute, reading them in the order they were received for one hour.
The district raised the possibility of pushing back the start of the school year at the board meeting last week but Diffenbaugh said the school year will start Aug. 5 as originally planned.
“We reached out to our teachers union to see if they were open to that but we weren’t able to come to an agreement,” Diffenbaugh said.
Despite the quick turnaround, Diffenbaugh said he’s confident the district will be ready for the start of the year.
“There’s a lot to do but I think that the lessons we learned in the spring are going to help us with the smooth delivery of laptops, addressing connectivity issues, etc.,” he said.
The district plans on having the schools issue Chromebooks to students and parents rather than having a couple of central distribution sites like during the spring. Teachers will receive expanded distance learning training and students will receive more training on distance learning when the school year starts.
Diffenbaugh said the district plans to have more synchronistic learning as school starts this year, meaning students will be online together watching a lesson from their teacher and completing assignments on a set schedule after a more independent asynchronistic style last school year.
“What we heard from our parents and our students both last spring and in our summer academy is the real-time synchronistic virtual teaching and learning is the most powerful,” Diffenbaugh said. “So we’re going to really work with our teachers and develop our curriculum and schedule so that there will be more real-time learning. I think it will be better for students and better received by our parents because in the spring we had to pivot within a two-week period (to distance learning) so a lot of it was, ‘Here’s the assignment’ and it was left to the teacher or parent to work on it together.”
The district’s reopening plan includes three phases. Students will begin in full distance learning with a gradual return to hybrid learning as data and science show it is safe to return. The goal to return to hybrid learning is October, while the target to return to in-person learning full-time is January.
“We’ll have to just continue to monitor the situation both in regards to community spread and with access to testing and access to health professionals’ guidance,” Diffenbaugh said. “Those are the three fundamental things that I think need to be looked at and in better control.”
Diffenbaugh said at times superintendents are being asked to make health decisions they don’t have the background to make.
“We really need better coordination both at the local and state level so that when we make the decision about coming back based on the data that is in our community, that it’s not this is what I as a superintendent think is healthy to bring kids back but it’s a consensus of health professionals that they recommend if the positivity rate is under 5% for two weeks time or if you can get test results within 24 to 48 hours, those are the conditions that they as health professional recommend for schools to come back,” he said.
Diffenbaugh said reopening schools has been politicized at the national level.
“Schools haven’t risen to the top of the priority list,” he said. “From my vantage point, schools should be where you start. Then you can talk about small businesses, then you can talk about gyms, then you can talk about restaurants.”
Diffenbaugh said he’s a parent himself and he understands the challenges families will face with continued distance learning, but the district’s job is to ensure the safety of its students and staff.
“It hurts to think about just how many families are going to be impacted by this decision,” he said. “We’re committed as a district to continuing to work with families not just on the academic front but on the social/emotional front, on the basic needs around housing, food, shelter, etc. to support our families through this difficult time. I think that what the pandemic has shown is schools truly are the center of their communities.”