Feeling more confident in student's return

CHENEY — School district officials have made some modifications in the phasing in of onsite, in-person instruction – plans they feel are on the right track thanks to recent updated guidance released by the state Department of Health and Gov. Jay Inslee’s office.

At the Dec. 16 school board meeting, Superintendent Rob Roettger said the district is pushing back the start of third-grade return to classroom from the original Jan. 13 to Jan. 19. Staff felt the move was necessary in order to allow for additional time to re-establish COVID-19 contract tracing protocols suspended during the holiday break, which runs Dec. 21 – Jan. 1.

“Tom (Assistant Superintendent Arlt) and the team are hiring, interviewing additional staff so that we can hire two additional teachers so that we can keep our class sizes at 20 and below at third-grade to be able to meet with the distancing guidelines that we have in place,” Roettger said.

The district remains on track to resume onsite instruction for fourth and fifth-grade students potentially on Feb. 1. That instruction would be in a hybrid model, with students divided into two A and B groups and attending school on two days — Monday/Thursday for the A group and Tuesday/Friday for the B group once instruction is fully underway on Jan. 25.

The district’s director of teaching and learning, Annie Wolfley, said the reason for the separation time between in-person learning days is it is “more appropriate instructionally” by creating larger blocks of time between onsite classes.

“So that students would come in on a Monday and then they’d be at home working asynchronously on Tuesday as opposed to coming in Monday, Tuesday and then not being back in-person with their teacher until the next Monday,” she said.

Wolfley said the model still has teachers connecting with students for instruction at least four days of the week through in-person and Zoom, and could turn into five days depending on how they utilized Wednesdays, which have been set aside for teacher preparation as well as small-group instruction. Feedback from districts doing mostly asynchronous (online) learning emphasized the importance of having as much “eyes on students” time as possible in schedules.

Wolfley also said they have developed plans for students who need to quarantine at some point during instruction so that their learning won’t be interrupted and they will be able to access instruction taking place in classroom. The district has seen great success with avoiding in-school transmission of COVID-19, but has still seen some quarantines.

“Our experience so far is every time we’ve brought students new grade level back we’ve had students that have had to quarantine on the first day back in person,” Wolfley said.

While plans for in-person instruction are taking shape, Wolfley emphasized that they are still continuing with fully online instruction for families who wish to remain in this format. She noted that they were releasing the fourth and fifth-grade in-person schedule now because they feel the most confident that the format is what it will look like on Jan. 19.

As the final elementary school grade levels prepare to return onsite, Wolfley said they are continuing to make progress on schedules for returning secondary school students. Input from committees set up to develop schedules for middle school return have focused on maintain the five-period days with in-person instruction two days a week, flexibility for small groups one day a week, ability to maintain in-person instruction for quarantined students and aligning with the 4/5 hybrid.

High school models are much the same, keeping a three-period daily schedule, two days in-person instruction weekly and maintaining daily contact in all cases with all three teachers.

Roettger emphasized the need for using a hybrid model in re-instituting in-person instruction, noting preschool – third-grade students have successfully returned using this format. The model helps the district conform with COVID-19 health and safety protocols, particularly social distancing.

“You can’t put 26 or 30 students in a classroom with six-foot distancing and all those things,” Roettger said. “It would take significantly more staff, more classroom space to be able to split up into 20 or less.”

Roettger added such distancing was more difficult at the middle and high school levels. New guidance and infection metrics released by the state on Wednesday have created more confidence in district staff to find a way to achieve this goal.

“I will tell you this though, I’m hopeful that from what I’ve seen from the Department of Health and the governor today that at some point, and I think in the near future we going to be able to do some things within a hybrid fashion for our secondary students as well,” Roettger said.

John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].