Update: In plan to reopen high schools, MCS considers sticking with block schedule
At a special meeting Monday, the Modesto City Schools Board of Education approved a plan to open junior high and high schools on a hybrid learning schedule that would have students on campus two days a week.
Trustees also received a presentation on combining TK-6 cohorts to expand on-campus instruction to four or five days a week.
As already is being done with transitional-kindergartners through sixth-graders, returning 7-12 students would be divided into two cohorts, determined by grade level and alphabetical order. Schools also will work to keep children in the same cohorts if they live in the same homes.
Group A would be at school Mondays and Tuesdays for in-person learning with teachers. Thursdays and Fridays, those students would do concurrent distance learning from home.
Group B would have the opposite schedule, and all students would be online on Wednesdays. That day, teachers would conduct small-group instruction virtually or in person and would provide feedback on digital learning.
For those families who wish to keep their children at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, 100% distance learning will continue to be offered.
Guidelines issued by the state last month say schools may open on such a cohort model when a county remains in the red tier of COVID-19 spread for five consecutive days. (Earlier California Department of Public Health guidance said 7-12 schools could reopen after 14 days in the red tier.) Stanislaus health officials estimate the county could reach red by mid-March.
Previously, MCS had intended to open junior high schools first, followed by high schools a couple of weeks later. Now, the intent is to be able to open all 7-12 grades on the sixth day the county is in the red tier.
“We know a lot more now than we knew back in October and November when we were looking at how to restart junior high and high schools” and recommended a staggered start, Associate Superintendent Brad Goudeau told trustees. District officials have learned from the cohorting done in the TK-6 schools and the protocols and procedures in place, he said. “There are similarities but clearly there are some differences,” Goudeau said, “but we do feel comfortable with the idea of opening, or reopening, 7-12 schools on the sixth day in the red.”
Next steps include verifying that all necessary supplies and materials are in place, continuing to work with labor partners and communicating with families, he said. The latter includes an online parent Q&A forum planned for March 2 from 6 to 7 p.m.
Return to traditional schedule questioned
During distance learning, all 7-12 schools have been on a block schedule, with fewer, longer periods than a traditional bell schedule, Goudeau said.
Under the plan approved Monday by the school board, junior highs would reopen on the traditional schedule they used before the pandemic closed schools.
Among high schools, those that were on a traditional schedule pre-COVID also would reopen that way. Those schools are Beyer, Downey, Enochs and Modesto.
But schools that used a block schedule prior to the pandemic — Davis, Gregori and Johansen — would remain under that schedule upon reopening.
In the more than hourlong public comment period before discussion of the reopening plan, trustees heard written requests from several Downey High teachers to remain on the block schedule.
Arguments included that staying with the block schedule would ease transition back into in-person learning for students and teachers.
Longer periods mean less impact of time lost to at-home students logging in and troubleshooting any tech issues, as well as in-person students wiping down their desks with disinfectant sheets (one of the safety procedures in the 7-12 plan).
And having fewer course periods means fewer passing periods, decreasing risk of virus transmission, teachers said.
During discussion of the reopening plan, Modesto High senior Carson Carranza, the student representative on the Board of Education, said he agreed that staying on a block schedule would be a better way to finish out the school year.
District administrators had said returning Beyer, Downey, Enochs and Modesto students to the traditional schedule was preferable because it’s what they were used to. “But we haven’t been in (the traditional) schedule in a very long time,” Carranza said, “and especially for freshmen or students who are still not fully set with their distance learning, I think staying in the block schedule as we transition back will be more valuable.”
He also did the math and said that on the traditional schedule, students would have two hours, five minutes of passing-period time vs. one hour, 10 minutes on the block schedule. “So an hour less passing-period exposure time with the block schedule, so that’s another pro,” Carranza said.
Some board members asked if it is possible to let high schools that want to remain on the block schedule to do so. District officials said it would require “re-engaging” with the Modesto Teachers Association and perhaps getting as many as 80% of a site’s teachers to vote for it.
Goudeau said doing that and taking other necessary steps, like creating a master schedule and providing in-service staff training would be “theoretically possible” but a challenge.
Because the board heard only from Downey teachers, trustee Cindy Marks asked district administrators to reach out to just that school “and see if we can find a way.”
Five days of TK-6 in-person learning ‘not reasonable’
After unanimously approving the 7-12 reopening plan, the trustees heard an information-only presentation on expanding TK-6 in-person education to four or even five days.
In the current hybrid learning model in which cohorts of students are on campuses two days a week, in-person attendance varies greatly from class to class, grade level to grade level and site to site, Goudeau told the board.
Seats that could be occupied are empty as some children continue to learn from home, but “our reopening plan did not provide us the ability to mix those cohorts, up until now,” he said.
County health officials have given schools guidance on how combine cohorts so long as desks and physical distancing remain a minimum of four feet, Goudeau said. “Each school is currently evaluating the daily in-person capacity of each of the classrooms.”
To combine cohorts, schools are asking families this week to commit to returning their children to in-person learning four or five days a week or doing 100% distance learning with concurrent instruction.
If a classroom receives more commitments to in-person instruction than it can accommodate, “we’ll have to make adjustments,” Goudeau told the board. “We are currently researching how we might do that.”
The clock is ticking because although the expansion plan is not contingent upon the county reaching the red tier, the district is working to combine cohorts by mid-March or earlier.
Answering a question from board member Chad Brown, Goudeau said that committing to in-person attendance does not mean that a child who is sick could not log in from home to join distance-learning classmates that day.
In a statement read during the public comment period that began the board meeting, Modesto Teachers Association President Doug Burton said MCS is the only district in the county doing concurrent in-person and live online instruction.
He said the model is physically difficult and mentally draining but has been reasonable. Having all students learn from home on Wednesdays has proved invaluable for teachers to provide small-group and one-on-one instruction, Burton said.
“It is not reasonable for the district to combine cohorts, increasing the number of in-person students, and ask (teachers) to do this five days a week,” he said.
Statements by several teachers also argued the value of keeping Wednesdays as a distance-learning day. In board discussion, trustees came down squarely on their side.
“It sounds like a good option at this point,” Homero Mejia said, noting the day gives teachers a bit of time for those valuable student meetings and to prepare for the rest of the week.
Adolfo Lopez said he, too, would like to see Wednesday remain an online learning day, as did John Ervin III. “We have some amazing teachers” who had to adapt to teaching styles and learning styles that changed almost overnight, Ervin said. They adapted “to an environment that nobody was prepared for” and that remains in flux. “And so it just seems like Wednesdays should be a time for them to be able to just absorb all of this.”
And Abel Maestas added that “it’s good to honor that Wednesday,” which clearly is important to teachers so “they have that time to plan for that difficult, difficult instruction that we’re gonna ask them to continue to do.”
The slide presentations on “Expanding In-Person Instruction for PreK-6 Schools” and the “7-12 Safe Schools Reopening Plan” are attachments in Monday’s board agenda, which is at agendaonline.net/public/modestocity.
This story was originally published February 23, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
