We are excited to have you participate in the input meeting on the opening of school 20-21 plan. Please find the link to the 5:30 pm Zoom meeting below. We would love for you to review the draft plan prior to the meeting so you can provide feedback and ask questions…
— from the email notice for an Archuleta School District Zoom session on June 21, 2020
The Archuleta School District (ASD) released its draft Archuleta School District 50 JT Opening Plan for the 2020-2021 school year, and I assume every school district in Colorado is currently doing the same thing. Releasing a ‘draft’ plan… a tentative plan… one that has, no doubt, changed over the past month, as surveys of parents and staff came back; as local health districts have modified their suggested guidance; as the Colorado Department of Education has modified its own tentative guidance…
…as the COVID death rate in the US as a whole shows a new, upward trend.
In an effort to address parent concerns about the coming year, ASD’s new Superintendent, Kym LeBlanc-Esparza, joined former School Board member Brooks Lindner, Pagosa Family School Director Jane Parker, and several other district staff members on Tuesday evening, July 21, for two public Zoom meetings.
I attended the 5:30pm online gathering, along with about 65 other people — mostly parents, I would guess. Since the gathering was advertised as an “parent input meeting”, we expected to have an opportunity to ask questions and make comments. The draft plan had been attached to the email invitation, and it mentioned three possible models of education we might expect, come September: “in-person learning”, “online instruction”, and “a pathway that involves components of in-person learning as well as a blended learning option”.
“Each family may have a different level of comfort during this time, which is why we have developed learning pathways to serve our students’ needs…” said the draft plan.
Here’s a shot of the Zoom screen as it appeared on my computer, showing only some of the participants. Zoom allows up to 25 people to be visible in each ‘block’ of participants, and you needed to scroll through three different ‘screens’ to see everyone at last night’s 5pm meeting. Superintendent LeBlanc-Esparza is at the top right. Mr. Lindner is highlighted at the top, center. Ms. Parker is at the top, left.
A couple of minutes into the Zoom session… just as Ms. LeBlanc-Esparza began her presentation… the District’s internet service stopped working… and we sat watching the screen, waiting for Ms. LeBlanc-Esparza to rejoin the meeting.
We waited patiently, and quietly.
And we waited.
We waited for 22 minutes, until she could walk across town to Mr. Lindner’s business office and re-join our gathering from that location.
As one of the meeting participants wrote in the Chat column while we were waiting for the online meeting to resume: “Surely the irony of this is not lost on everyone as we are considering remote learning for our students.”
When the Superintendent finally rejoined us, she did a fine job of summarizing the 10-page information packet the participants had been sent and which the district hoped we had studied prior to the meeting. The packet was our ‘required reading’, you might say… and perhaps some of us had not, in fact, done our homework. That’s an assumption typically made by an experienced educator, I think: that not everyone has done their homework.
The participants were then split up — via the Zoom technology — into small break-out sessions of about seven people, where more intimate online conversations could be had. Mr. Lindner facilitated the group to which I had been assigned. Our particular group seemed rather shy, and hesitant to ask questions or make comments, and Mr. Lindner made it clear that he didn’t have the answers to the questions posed; he was, however, collecting the questions and comments, to be answered “later” — in the next draft of the Opening Plan, I assume?
We then rejoined Superintendent LeBlanc-Esparza and folks had the opportunity to post additional comments or question in the Chat column. Ms. LeBlanc-Esparza addressed some of those questions before the Zoom meeting came to an end.
Some of the questions and comments:
On the days that students are participating in on line learning, will it be a self-paced model much like we had last year, or will the kids be expected to sit in front of the computer for the full day?
If we are going to have a large number of students from Dulce Reservation, how do we understand what the risk factor is for those students and their respective families, as well as the more localized students and families? There are very different levels of issues on Indian Reservations. As native people, we know this.
One of the questions in our breakout was: Are students checked for symptoms and told to stay home BEFORE they get on the school bus? Or does this check happen at the school building?
Any talk of adding a nurse at each school, instead of one for all schools? An RN?
My student wants a voice in their education; how will you make that happen?
What would expectations and accountability be for the high school teachers? Many were fabulous [during online schooling last spring] — beyond belief! Some never showed up. 75% great, 25% never there.
Our group members all agree we need to have accurate data and analytics for Archuleta County to base the decisions on, about how to proceed for the school year. After doing some research, one group member found that accurate numbers for our area are unavailable.
I know my answers to the survey have changed, based on the cases of virus in our community with the tourists and the Archuleta residents. Anyone else?
Superintendent LeBlanc-Esparza explained that the district would be creating a ‘Google doc’ accessible to parents and the community, where a written conversation could continue to unfold.
We were then sent on our way, so the staff could prepare for the 7pm parent input meeting.
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.