So the plan for school this year, at the K-5 level, was pretty complicated to begin. (the plan was made after lots of meeting and planning and careful consideration by doctors, officials, CDC, etc. Safety is the key, obviously.) But hey, it's Covid-19 2020, so that's no surprise. The K-5 kids would start out going to school in the classroom 2 days a week. Each teacher would have 1/2 a class at any given time. For example, Olivia would go Tuesdays and Fridays and the other half of her class would go Mondays and Thursdays. The rest of the days were simply no-school days. No distance learning-yahoo! This was to go on for 3 weeks. The 4th week would begin 5 days a week of in classroom learning. (nevermind the debacle of half of the class starting an hour earlier than the other half and then getting release an hour earlier.) Sounds pretty good, right? Ease the kids and teachers in in small sessions and small numbers to get everyone used to masks, hand-washing, social distancing, desks, and just plain terrible-seeming school days. (also nevermind the back and forth of emotions for my sweet girl. Not wanting to go at all with having to wear a mask and social distancing, to wishing she could start right off with 5 days a week.) Well, sometime about, oh, 5 days before the 4th week was to begin, there is news of a board meeting to discuss a survey that was sent to teachers, and to decide if actually going 5 days a week is the best idea. And come to find out, it was decided that it's actually NOT safe to have the kids go 5 days a week, so we can now plan on continuing the 2 days a week and adding remote learning for the other 3 days. Hmmm. Did anyone see that coming? Nope. You can probably imagine the confusion, frustration, and even outright anger that this was met with. Yikes. So here is my letter to the district, which I will never send, but needed to get down on paper so I can move on.
Dear administrators, staff, board, etc, etc,
Allow me to start off by acknowledging that this is an unprecedented time and of course I am grateful for all the hard work everyone is doing around the clock, probably rather than sleeping, to figure out how on earth to educate kids during a scary pandemic in which we are all totally over it. Trying to figure out how to keep kids safe, teachers safe, not burden families, caregivers, community partners. Not get on the wrong side of anyone, but inevitably making one extreme group or the other mad. Not knowing best practices for how to follow state safety guidelines and just hoping you're making the right decisions based on the information you have at any given time. Having to work with the buildings and grounds and budgets you have. I get it. I wouldn't want your job. I wouldn't. And what I wish could happen, what I think should have happened. What I want to happen next...well those things don't really matter much, because I don't have your job. But I feel compelled to at least give a little feedback on the present situation, so bear with me.
From what I understand, the first 3 weeks weren't meant to be a trial run. The only thing that I thought would keep kids from returning to school 5 days a week would be a change in our safety status as a county. (you know, red, yellow, green. Yeah, you know.) Now that doesn't mean it's not a good idea to reevaluate things. I don't mean that at all. By all means, listen to the teachers and staff that are right in the thick of it if they have something to offer. BUT. Might I suggest a little more thorough and proactive communication with families and caregivers next time? I don't really know why you decided to give a survey to the elementary staff. Was it demanded by the union? Was it considered necessary based on frustrations or worries aired by teachers? Was it because another district did it? I don't know the reason, however in my humble opinion I think it would have been right and prudent to let families and caregivers know that because of X, you are going to survey the staff to see how they are feeling about moving forward with the 5 day a week plan, and that you know the timing is very bad and you know this wasn't the original plan, and you are sorry to throw this curve ball at us, but certainly the safety of students, teachers, and the community is top priority. OK, cool. Not great, but I get it. Thanks for letting us know. I sure hope the survey comes back with results that show a readiness to proceed because we're jazzed about learning and socializing and keeping our kiddo emotionally and mentally in a good place. (let me also pause and say that I also get that there are probably plenty of families and caregivers out there who were relieved to know the 5 days a week plan was nixed. They may feel much more nervous about the spread of the virus and appreciate efforts to maintain extra caution. Totally. I get that, too. Those people are like, thanks for letting us know. I sure hope they will take their time with this and maybe decide to postpone 5 days a week.) So now we all know there was a survey and we know things might change. Some of us are happy, some are confused and some are already made before the results are even brought to a board meeting. But at least there was communication.
This brings me to my second thought. Why were parents, community partners and others also surveyed?
OK, and now for the doozy. Maybe at this point, after the survey was given and answered and discussed...Maybe it's a good time to say, hey look everyone, we made a mistake. We want so badly to teach your kids that we naively thought it would work out to bring them to school 5 days a week after 3 weeks. We were wrong. There was no way for us to know the strain it would put on the teachers. There was no way to realize the maxed out room capacities or other logistical nightmares that came to light only when we had kids in the buildings. We are SO SORRY that we couldn't have known this and that we made a plan that we couldn't follow through on. WE KNOW how hard this will be on lots of people. WE KNOW there are multitudes of problems this will bring. WE KNOW that remote learning was way less than ideal in the Spring for 100s of reasons. WE KNOW being around peers and caring adults is super important to the development of your kids emotional and mental health. WE KNOW there are tons and tons of you who can't work from home and are now stuck. WE KNOW AND WE ARE SORRY. BUT we honestly are scared. No one wants to constantly worry about someone getting coronavirus because while they were at school a certain guideline couldn't be followed. NO ONE wants your kids or anyone else to get sick. We aren't making this change because teachers are complaining about a new way of teaching. (which let's face it, must be super hard. Super sad, even. No teachers want to have to teach this way, especially to little kiddos!) It's the safety. WE ARE SORRY WE GOT IT WRONG. And at this point, rather than saying in two weeks we'll know more. In 3 weeks we'll have some things figured out. We need to figure out budgets and buildings and staff and this and this and that. At this point, we'd like to say that it's best to plan on 2 days a week in the classroom and 3 days of remote learning indefinitely. UNLESS we have to go to all remote learning. (yikes, maybe leave that part out just for now.) Do you see what I'm saying?
Basically, just, Hey folks, our communication was lacking, our planning was optimistically naive, WE WERE WRONG AND WE'RE SORRY and now let's just plan on 2 days a week in the classroom and 3 days a week remote and you can bet we're doing our best to make that situation as good as it can be, both while your kids are with us and while we're helping them learn from a distance. Period.
And so there are my thoughts.
With sincere gratitude for all the unknown things you do daily and forgiveness for the mistakes we all make,, and apologies for liking to think I might know more than someone who is actually facing all of this head on,
An anonymous parent.
PS I live right behind one of the schools. I have SEEN all the work that has been done to prepare for coronaschool. I have seen the effort put into the classrooms and lunchroom and outdoor spaces. I KNOW so much has been done to keep everyone safe. I can't imagine all the work that has gone into all of that. THANK YOU.
