Schools plan to fill gaps created by virus-caused disruptions

Even with the best learning intentions in place at Willoughby-Eastlake Schools, district officials say gaps in learning caused by the novel coronavirus will be a strong focus in the years ahead.

The district will be focusing on two things to address the learning gaps, said Chuck Murphy, assistant superintendent for W-E Schools. One will be summer intervention, which will start this summer.

The summer intervention will have a two-pronged approach, Murphy said. Students will have the opportunity to come in and work with staff or for students who are more comfortable with the online tutoring approach, that opportunity will be provided.

The second prong is the focus for next school year and beyond, Murphy said.

“We’re really trying to hone in on response intervention programming,” he said. “As we work with kids and notice they are behind, we are going to put some things like daily intervention and daily enrichment into our schedule.

“We’re going to build that into schedules from kindergarten to eighth grade and that will be time to provide students with what they need.”

If students need more time on some kind of learning they’re struggling with, the staff will spend more time with that intervention, Murphy said. Conversely, if students are exactly where they need to be, staff will spend time trying to grow them and give them enrichment opportunities they need to continue to progress with their learning.

W-E Schools’ staff will also be trained to promote reading instruction in a hands-on kind of way, Murphy said.

“House Bill 436 talks about a mandate for dyslexia programming, and we’re going to be training our staff in that program to work with our students next year to help meet that needs of that bill,” he said.

The school is also looking at a new coaching model for both teachers and administrators to focus on the extended learning standards, Murphy said.

“The state provides the regular standards for us, but they’ve provided extended learning standards and those are for those students who are struggling with the normal standards,” he said. “Through a coaching model, both our regular education teachers and our special ed. teachers are working together. They’re going to go through and coach other teachers in the building on how to utilize these standards to help improve student achievement.”

During the novel coronavirus pandemic, the schools’ focus was to try to give students an opportunity to be at school five days a week if at all possible if that’s what they wanted to do, Murphy said.

“One of the things I felt was pretty neat was even our preschool students wore the masks and really, no problems all the way around,” he said. “We were up front with our families that our buildings weren’t designed to be able to stay six feet apart for every student, so we had to be upfront with that, but we did tell them we would social distance when possible.”

Hand-sanitizing stations were made available and additional cleaners were hired for the buildings to come in at night to sanitize all surfaces and high-touched areas, Murphy said.

“We did what we could to make things as safe as possible, but with that said, we also gave our students the option to be virtual,” he said. “Within that virtual option, we had two different models. Our first model with the elementary students — they actually had a dedicated virtual teacher who worked with them everyday online and we had about 1,400 students choose that option at the elementary level.”

The second virtual learning option was different because it didn’t have a dedicated online teacher, but one who was working with students who were in person, which was live on camera, Murphy said.

“Students could view the classroom live. That was a tremendous challenge for our teachers, as well as the elementary virtual teacher,” he said. “There was a lot of new learning going on for staff here to deal with (the coronavirus), and we’re really proud of our staff and students who have made the best of the situation — taking on new tasks, new learning and rolled with the punches.

“We had about 1,200 students choose that, so it was similar to the (elementary students) percentage.”

During the pandemic, the district had two interruptions to the different learning options, Murphy said, with the first being the district-wide shutdown.

“We went full remote learning from about Nov. 23 to Jan. 16 over the holidays. Everybody was virtual at that point and then we were able to come back and continue with the models,” he said.

The second interruption varied from building to building.

“We had a hard time getting subs as well as everybody in the state, so when that happened and because staff would have to quarantine, those numbers got a little bit bigger in terms absenteeism than our sub pool could handle,” he said. “From time to time, maybe for a day or three days, we did have to go full remote with a particular building at any different time throughout the school year.”

About 900 of W-E Schools’ staff were vaccinated, which included regular staff, coaches and substitutes, Murphy said.

“One of the things we wanted to address was what we’re doing to get kids ready for the real world and these vaccination clinics were a tremendous opportunity for our nursing students who come in,” he said. “They were actually able to give shots and they not only did they give shots, but also able to fill the syringes. Our director of nursing, Lori Klonowski, who is a registered nurse said, ‘I’ve probably only given 15 shots in my whole lifetime and they give 15 in an hour.’ It’s been a very good experience for us.”