By LESLIE EIKLEBERRY
Salina Post
Classes for the Salina USD 305 2020-21 school year have a new start date.
During a special meeting this morning, the USD 305 Board of Education approved a revised school calendar and plan for safely educating students during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Classes are scheduled to begin Aug. 31. Prior to this morning's decision, the start date was Aug. 11.
"We are recommending that we delay the start of school for both students and staff for the 20-21 school year," said Superintendent Linn Exline. "We've been preparing to reopen school since the last school year ended, but a delay at this time would allow for professional learning for all staff. We've had small groups of teachers working, but we haven't had the opportunity to work with all of our faculty, and we have many faculty who have a direct impact each day on student learning in Salina public schools."
Exline noted that the school calendar in place prior to the meeting only had two days of professional learning prior to the first day of classes.
"Given the likelihood that much of this year will be spent in a hybrid or an off-site model, we really need to have time for teachers to plan for instructional delivery in both of those models," Exline told the board.
She continued, "The reopening guidance from Kansas State Department of Education was released on July 15. Today is July 24. That is not much time to review a thousand-page document and to ensure that we have the number of staff members that we have are ready to go implement the kinds of changes that are being suggested in that document. The guidance included learning competencies and operational guidance for safety."
Exline pointed out that USD 305 personnel had already been working on many of the items in the KSDE guidance.
"But there was additional guidance that we want to consider to make sure that our schools are as safe as possible and that we provide the highest quality education that we possibly can for our students," she said.
Exline said that with the health concerns in the community, USD 305 personnel need to carefully consider the safety guidance from KSDE and how it will be implemented by teachers in their classrooms.
Exline also discussed the items in the governor's executive order on Monday and how the order will affect USD 305.
"Included in those are temperature checks for anyone entering our buildings, masks for all students, staffs, visitors, and vendors, and hourly hand washing," Exline said. " No-touch thermometers were recently ordered in order for us to be able to do temperature checks of over 7,000 students and over 1,600 staff members on a daily basis prior to them entering the buildings."
Exline also told the board that a remote learning option was added for the 2020-21 school year.
"Knowing that we have some students who are medically fragile or live in homes that have others that have immuno-compromised health situations, we added an option for remote learning for students this year," she said.
Exline reviewed with the board the proposed reopening phases. She pointed out that Phase 4 was for parent-teacher conferences.
"We would like some time for parent-teacher conferences to occur prior to school starting. One of the challenges is coming off of last spring when we had the continuous learning model, that is what people think of when they think of remote learning now, and we need to make sure that everybody, parents, students, and staff are on the same page when it comes to what the expectations are for this year," Exline said.
After the board unanimously approved the 2020-21 school calendar, Exline explained the Connect 2 Learn proposal that, if approved by the board, would allow the district to educate students in person, remotely, or in a combination of the two. According to the plan, two options would be available for students. One option, which the district is calling "On-Site Learning," contains three learning environments: on-site, hybrid, and off-site. The other option is for total remote learning.
Exline told the board that staff was recommending that on-site students begin the school year in a hybrid learning model, which would include both face-to-face and online instruction.
According to the plan, "when USD 305 is using a hybrid model, students will not attend school in the school building every day. Instead, half the students will attend in the school building while the other half work at home. This will allow additional social distancing in our classrooms and limit the number of student contacts. Families have been assigned to a cohort A or B for the hybrid model. Changes will not be allowed."
"Our goal this year is to provide a flexible, responsible, responsive environment that ensures the safety of our student, and our staff, and our families, and that also ensures that we have a year-worth of academic and social, emotional growth for all of our students," Exline said.
The board unanimously approved the Connect 2 Learn plan. You can learn more about the Connect 2 Learn plan on the district's website.
The board also approved a Coronavirus Relief Fund Agreement with the Saline County Commission. The agreement makes the district eligible to apply for part of the $11,026,434 federal Coronavirus Relief Fund money the county received on Monday. Some of that money is available to schools to help cover COVID-19 related expenses.