Pittsburgh Public Schools to start required instruction in April

Pittsburgh Public Schools will restart required instruction for all of its nearly 23,000 students in April even though its buildings will likely remain closed.

Classes were suspended earlier this month amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and the district began providing students with optional grade-level schoolwork during the shutdown.

But Minika Jenkins, the district’s chief academic officer, said the district began preparing lessons that students will be able to access outside of the classroom. The mandatory lessons — which will come in different formats — will start April 14.

“We’re doing our best to address as much of the current instructional day that students have in all grade levels,” Ms. Jenkins said Friday afternoon in a phone interview.

Gov. Tom Wolf ordered the closure of all K-12 schools across Pennsylvania amid the pandemic. Pittsburgh Public Schools announced last week that the district schools would remain closed through April 13, but that the shutdown will likely last longer.

The district has been assessing the technology needs of students over the past week, and it asked parents to fill out a survey that is available online and at grab-and-go meal locations. Ebony Pugh, a spokeswoman for the district, said the survey has garnered about 5,900 responses so far.

Ms. Jenkins said the district has about 2,500 laptop computers available to deploy to students and teachers, but that more will be

needed. She said the district is trying to obtain more computers though foundations and community partners.

“We are definitely taking whatever is being offered and working so we can make sure as many students can have access to technology as possible,” Ms. Jenkins said.

The district, however, will make sure that any teachers who need laptops get them before passing them out to students, Ms. Jenkins said.

After teachers, she said, high school seniors preparing to graduate will be the next priority. The district wants every senior to be able to access lessons online.

The district is still trying to determine what, if any, changes will be made for students to graduate. The changes depend on a number of factors, including if students are able to return to schools or if remote learning will continue for the remainder of the year.

“Our goal is to do what’s in the best interest of the student,” Ms. Jenkins said. “If that means we have to make some drastic changes to the requirements, then that’s what we have to do.”

Before the lessons debut for students, though, teachers must be comfortable with using the technology that is needed to implement the instruction, she said.

The district has partnered with Business Technology Professionals, an external organization that will provide virtual training to teachers and other school staff on the Microsoft Teams program that they will use for lessons.

The instruction, however, will not be online-only because some students may struggle with access to technology and equipment. Ms. Jenkins said the district would use a “blended model” that will incorporate several options, including online learning and work packets.

“We want to look at multiple ways of reaching our students,” she said. “Microsoft Teams [is] downloadable on smartphones, they can also access it on a tablet, they can access it on a laptop. But if they don’t have that technology, they actually have an instructional packet, a hard copy that they can use.”

The district continues to work through the logistics of how to get lessons, particularly the physical packets, to students. Options include handing them out at grab-andgo meal sites or sending them to homes through postal mail.

Ms. Jenkins said the district is also focused on making the instruction feasible for special-needs students and English-language learners. For example, she said, district staff is exploring how Zoom can be utilized for speech therapists, and staffers are translating instructional materials into other languages.

Dealing with the shutdown has been “very challenging” in ways beyond trying to make sure students have access to instruction, Ms. Jenkins said.

Because teachers were outside of school as the district worked to create a contingency plan, teams as small as three or four people have been developing content for each subject for all students. Ms. Jenkins said she hopes that bringing teachers in with Microsoft Teams will help “lighten the load.”

But the district will still face difficulties because it will have to rely on services — some outside of the district — as staff will not be able to gain access into buildings.

“There’s a lot of different things at work that we have to pull together to see how this comes together in a unique system,” Ms. Jenkins said.