Modesto superintendent lays out some of what students, families can expect rest of school year
A day after it was announced that public schools in Stanislaus County will be closed through spring in response to the coronavirus, the superintendent of the biggest district, Modesto City Schools, talked with The Bee on a range of related topics.
Perhaps the most important question on the minds of students and their families is what ending the school year with distance learning will mean for grades and, in the case of seniors, graduation.
MCS Superintendent Sara Noguchi said Thursday morning that she can guarantee on behalf of the Board of Education and herself that when it comes to grades and graduation requirements, “students are held harmless for the situation they’re in” because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Superintendents up and down the state have been weighing options for finishing out the school year, and one has been to employ a simple pass-or-fail system, Noguchi said. Another is what she and her staff intend to propose to the school board: that students have the opportunity to bring up their grades, but otherwise, third-quarter grades will be their final ones. They “won’t decrease in any way,” she said.
She anticipates that proposal going before the board at either its April 20 or May 4 meeting.
Would that mean that if students (and their parents) are happy with their A’s and B’s, they can just check out for the rest of the year? “That’s not our hope,” Noguchi said.
What’s the district’s leverage, she asked. Teachers and administrators are challenging themselves to put out “engaging learning that extends what we’ve already done — opportunities to explore new learning,” Noguchi said. By doing that, the goal is that students holed up in their homes will have a hunger for learn, to “interact and discover,” she said. Or at the very least, that their parents will insist upon it.
How AP and IB are going forward
Recognizing the hard work students have put into Advanced Placement courses, the nonprofit College Board is moving forward with AP exams, Noguchi said. The College Board website says it’s providing free, live and on-demand AP courses and developing a new at-home testing option. The full exam schedule, specific free-response question types that will be on each AP Exam, and additional testing information will be available by Friday, it says.
And regarding the International Baccalaureate program offered at Modesto High, the superintendent said it is honoring coursework and awarding course certificates and diplomas. IB coordinators also are working on providing oral exams, she said.
The superintendent said she’s very proud of the work district employees have done over the past weeks, and acknowledged strong partnerships with the California School Employees Association and the Modesto Teachers Association.
“No one in the world can say, ‘We’ve done this before,’” Noguchi said of educators moving “at the speed of light” to transition to distance learning.
Half of Modesto City Schools’ teaching staff really had no experience with online learning, she said, and now they’re undertaking it on top of being isolated at home, perhaps with their own children to care for, and perhaps with spouses who have lost their jobs because of the pandemic.
Getting computers to kids
Two weeks ago, seventh- through 12th-grade students all had computers to do schoolwork at home, but students in transitional kindergarten through sixth grade, as well as those attending Elliott Alternative Education Center, did not. Now, the district is distributing over 15,000 Chromebooks and getting them online. The devices are being cleaned twice, reimaged and distributed through a drive-through pickup operation at school sites to limit exposure to children and their parents.
The district is working with Internet providers on free and reduced-price service, she said, and has a team to help parents who speak various languages.
Support for teachers includes teams of instructional coaches and coordinators to help them learn how to access distance learning and education management systems, Noguchi said. Since Monday, there have been more than 1,000 webinars offered on Schoology and other tools.
Keeping lines of communication with families open also is crucial, she said, and many hours have been spent working on how to reach out and respond to parents. If someone calls a high school or other office, they’ll be transferred to the people who’d normally answer those lines, or at least to monitored voicemail boxes.
Revamped site, new hot lines
The district website has been revamped to get important coronavirus-related information right upfront. By the end of the week, Noguchi hopes, there will be a section specifically for seniors, who are likely feeling great disappointment that this is the way their high school experience is ending and have questions on what graduation will look like, college applications, scholarships, reaching a counselor, and more.
The district also has hotlines to offer social and emotional support for students, who’ve had so much taken away from them, Noguchi said. Students can call if they have questions about anything from grades to graduation to IB or AP, she said, or if they have issues such as not feeling comfortable studying at home, or are feeling isolated.
In a new learning environment that is far from ideal, the superintendent said she still believes “we will have great things happen. I believe in the educational process.”
Teachers who are unfamiliar and perhaps fearful of distance-learning technology “will be engaging with their kids before we know it,” she added. “I’m so overwhelmed and proud of what I’ve seen.”
All Stanislaus schools stay closed
The extended closure for all 25 districts in Stanislaus County was announced Wednesday afternoon by local school officials. They had hoped for a May 4 return. They decided on distance learning through spring after hearing concerns from Gov. Gavin Newsom and Tony Thurmond, the state superintendent of instruction.
“We want students and parents to understand that the 2019-20 school year is not over; it has just transitioned from classroom instruction to distance learning,” said Scott Kuykendall, the county superintendent of schools, in a news release.
The county’s districts closed their campuses March 19 as part of the effort to reduce the human contact that can spread the virus. At the time, they set tentative reopening dates that ranged from April 6 to 20.
They announced March 26 that the schools could reopen May 4 if conditions allowed. Wednesday’s announcement ended that idea.
The distance learning has included online instruction and printed packets to keep students progressing during the pandemic.
The release said each district will contact families with information on the upcoming distance learning. They also will tell them about graduation, grades and transcripts, scholarships and summer school.
Other counties, diocese
As of Wednesday, most school districts in San Joaquin County still planned to reopen April 20. The Manteca Unified School District had a May 18 target. It was April 6, next Monday, for the New Hope and New Jerusalem districts.
Thursday morning, San Joaquin County Superintendent of Schools James Mousalimas announced a recommendation for schools to pursue a distance-learning model through the end of the school year.
“Even though school facilities are closed for the remainder of the school year, the school year is not over, and the learning does not stop,” Mousalimas said in a news release. “Our local schools are equipped to take on this challenge.”
All 20 of Merced County’s school districts have announced that campuses will be closed through spring. The Merced Union High School District did so Wednesday, and others followed Thursday. Distance learning will continue.
Tuolumne County school districts had planned on a possible May 4 reopening until Friday, when they announced that distance learning would run through the school year. County Superintendent Cathy Parker discussed the issue in an online update.
Catholic schools in the Diocese of Stockton now plan to remain closed through spring, according to an update Friday from Bishop Myron Cotta. Reopening campuses is still possible “if public health officers deem it safe for them to do so,” he said.
These schools are doing distance learning. The diocese covers San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Tuolumne, Calaveras, Alpine and Mono counties.
Patterson’s message
The Patterson Unified School District acknowledged that the closure will be especially hard on high school seniors who had hoped for a normal graduation.
“But let’s also not forget that there are families grieving loved ones who can’t hold a proper funeral right now,” a Facebook post said. “There are folks having to cancel their wedding plans. There are families struggling to make ends meet because one or more breadwinners lost their job due to the economic impact of COVID-19 crisis.”
Kuykendall took part in a live Q&A on the StanEmergency Facebook page Wednesday night. He noted that people with educational experience have asked if they can volunteer to help families with distance learning.
Yes, they can, at Love Our Schools. More information is at www.loveourschools.com.
This story was originally published April 2, 2020 at 9:22 PM.
