Want to keep kids studying at home? Time has come to let Modesto City Schools know
With just six weeks until the Modesto City Schools academic year begins, and with Stanislaus County on the state’s watch list for COVID-19 hot spots because of an increase in cases, the deadline is here for families to state their preference between having their students study from home or return to campuses.
The district wants families to submit by Tuesday the preregistration form for Modesto Virtual Academy, its online independent study program for students from transitional kindergarten through 12th grade. As of Sunday, the families of 1,948 students had submitted the form, said district spokeswoman Krista Noonan.
The form signifies only interest in, not commitment to, the program. The district says families will be called in mid- to late July to make a final decision on placement for the school year. But students whose families do not submit the MVA preregistration form will attend classes in a “traditional school environment,” according to MCS.
But even traditional school already is looking much different than it did pre-pandemic. Sports teams are being allowed to work on drills and conditioning, but without balls. When classes resume, there will be no grouping of desks for student collaborations, and no assemblies, rallies and field trips. There will be hand sanitizer and tissues in abundance, social distancing, and masks required for children riding school buses.
Most significantly, of course, there will be classmates, teachers, administrators and other school employees (but not yet parent and community volunteers). And that in-person contact is a big reason some families want their kids at school and others do not.
In a popular Modesto-based Facebook group, a member asked last week, “How many of you will be sending your kids to traditional school or Modesto Virtual Academy?” The post drew more than 250 comments, with the vast majority choosing schools.
Health also was, predictably, a concern cited by families opting for Modesto Virtual Academy. And in some cases, independent study simply works best for students.
What is Modesto Virtual Academy?
MVA was not created as a response to the coronavirus pandemic that closed schools in March and forced students into so-called distance learning for the remainder of the 2019-20 year. It started years ago as the district’s independent study program but before the pandemic was only for high school students and served perhaps 100 youth, said Mike Rich, senior director in the curriculum instruction and professional development division. “So we’re expanding it to include all K-12 students.”
The expansion meant finding a curriculum for younger students. It needed to be accessible to students without a teacher having to explain everything, Rich said. It needed to be self-paced and have videos and other resources built in.
The district considered about a half-dozen programs before selecting Florida Virtual School, which the Stanislaus County Office of Education has used for three or four years for all of its independent study, Rich said.
Florida Virtual School, or FLVA, offers a lot of options for Advanced Placement as well as remediation, he said. And it’s just finished building a K-6 curriculum. “Really, that was kind of the hard part to find. Not a lot of people have independent-study K through six, which is understandable,” Rich said. “I don’t think I would ever say it’s the best way to educate a child. But in these times, we need options for parents, and so this is an opportunity for us to provide that service.”
He said FLVA also has done a lot of work to get it its high school courses A-G approved. A-G courses are those students must complete with a grade of C or better to be minimally eligible for admission to the University of California and California State University systems.
Modesto City Schools has to make some curriculum adjustments in subject areas like, for example, California history, Rich said, but that’s true of pretty much anything the district adopts. “One of the advantages of Florida Virtual is it has the option to operate within our learning management system, or LMS, which is Schoology. That allows us to insert, when we need to, whatever we want without the student even realizing that we’ve put that in.”
Who’s teaching MVA?
A chief reason Modesto City Schools needs to gauge families’ interest in Modesto Virtual Academy is to ensure sufficient staffing. MVA will have its own teachers, as opposed to teachers having both in-person and at-home students. The reason for that is if an MVA teacher has 30 students and is meeting with each for an hour a week, that consumes most of that teacher’s time, Rich said. And for the brick-and-mortar classroom teachers to educate their in-person students and then have a few MVA students “on the side,” he said, would be very difficult.
As the district learns how many students it will have in MVA, it will shift staffing to support them. “We’ve already been contacted by several teachers that say, ‘Hey, that’s the model for me. I’m a little bit more susceptible to the disease or I’m immunocompromised and I think this would be a great way for me to still teach but not have to be in the classroom,’” Rich said. “So I think it’s there’s a benefit for for all parties involved.”
Clearly, there will be dramatic differences as MVA teachers work with students from the early grades through high school. High school juniors and seniors, for instance, should be able to access the FLVA content, take the assessments, watch videos, etc., and “self-monitor and regulate” themselves, Rich said.
Younger students, meanwhile, will need more virtual hand-holding from teachers and from “characters” built into the curriculum to guide students through the work.
Unlike the distance learning that ended the 2019-2020 school year, in which some teachers used video and other online tools to offer live instruction to students who logged in at class time, MVA is a one-on-one model.
The teachers also don’t have to produce the curriculum, Rich said. “So their time will be spent on individualizing and differentiating to make sure students are successful with the curriculum. It’ll be a little bit different style of teaching, but I think most teachers, if they’re going to be in this model, are going to be excited to be able to really get to that student level and help them as they’re learning.”
Rich and MCS Superintendent Sara Noguchi also have emphasized that MVA needs a partnership with parents to ensure students succeed. Parents will need to make sure their kids are staying on task and getting assignments done. There will be training for parents, Rich said, and “lots of communication” between teachers and families.
For more on Modesto Virtual Academy, visit www.mcs4kids.com. For more on Florida Virtual School, visit www.flvs.net.
This story was originally published June 29, 2020 at 2:34 PM.
