Home or school: It’ll be parents’ choice in the fall, Peninsula School District says

If school resumes in the fall, students in the Peninsula School District will have a choice between returning to the classroom or continuing to study online at home, the district has told parents.

“We are going to have school on dual platforms — on site and online — and each is going to balance the other,” said Dr. Art Jarvis, the district superintendent.

In fact, he said, the district is counting on 15 to 20 percent if students staying home, because their absence will leave enough room in classrooms for social distancing to work.

“We’d like to open the doors and say that any parent who wants to send their child back to school can do so,” he said. “We are planning a full onsite curriculum, K through 12, five days a week.”

But, he said, “We do recognize that there is a significant part of the population that is fearful and nervous, perhaps having vulnerable older people at home, and concerned about the kids bringing home germs.”

To accommodate those parents, the district will continue to offer online instruction, he said.

“We are going to continue to have a very strong online program,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean six hours a day online. What it does mean is that there will be daily contact with teachers, materials sent home, assignments given and engagement expected five days a week.”

Changing by the hour

Jarvis spoke to The Gateway about the districts’ plans last week in a telephone interview from his home, where has has been working since March.

With the containment or spread of the COVID-19 virus “literally changing by the day and by the hour,” Jarvis said, the district also wants to have a strong online program up and running in case in-classroom teaching has to be shut down again.

“We want to be able to turn on a dime if that happens,” he said.

The transition effort is being led by Melissa Wisner, the district’s curriculum coordinator, two deputy superintendents, John Hellwich and Dan Gregory, and Karen Anderson, the chief financial officer, whose remit includes transportation and food service.

The district has about 9,000 students in eight elementary schools, four middle schools and two high schools. Surveys of parents indicate perhaps as many as 1,500 to 1,800 may opt for online study. Others will prefer home-schooling or transfer to private schools, the district expects.

Ironically, the district is counting on a high level of absenteeism to make in-person schooling work. A typical elementary school classroom normally holds 22 to 23 students, Jarvis said. If 15 to 20 percent choose to attend online, that number drops to 12 to 19.

“We’re still working on the details, but there is every indication we can make that work within the social-distancing requirements,” he said.

The state Superintendent of Public Instruction has called for a separation of six feet between students at all times, whether in the classroom, the cafeteria, or hallways. They will also be required to wear face coverings and wash their hands frequently.

Bring your own masks

Masks will be required — although Jarvis said he’s trying to remember to use the term “face coverings,” which children find less alarming.

“For some of the kids, the whole idea of ‘masks’ is frightening,” he said.

The district is providing masks for teachers and staff, but parents will be expected to provide their own, Jarvis said. There will be supplies at school for the inevitable times kids forget theirs at home.

As for enforcement, teachers are “not going to have time to be chasing around second-graders to get them to wear their masks,” he said. Instead, staff will focus on educating the kids on the reasons they should wear them — to protect themselves, their classmate and their teachers.

Parents who “don’t believe in masks,” will be invited to participate in the online program, Jarvis said.

For social distancing, maintenance crews are already at work re-configuring classrooms, Jarvis said.

“We’re removing a lot of the larger furniture, like tables,” he said. “In many classrooms, we’ll be able to distance children by moving desks and chairs to the periphery of the room, so that they form a circle.”

Students will be urged to wash their hands five times during the school day, and some teachers are planning to start the day by having each child wipe down their own desk.

Arriving students will be met at the school door with a temperature check, and opening hours may be staggered to avoid a crush in the morning.

In designing the online curriculum for the coming year, district educators drew on lessons learned since March, when the COVID-19 shutdown went into effect, the superintendent said.

“Beginning in March, I watched staff, particularly teachers, do some miraculous work,” Jarvis said. “And one of the things we learned is that it’s almost impossible to just pick up the school curriculum and put it online. You have to almost design it from scratch. The most important thing is for students and teachers to interact.”

Real study, real grades

In contrast to last year, online work will be graded, he said.

“One of the things we learned from recent experience is that kids are not dumb,” Jarvis said. “If they pick up on the fact that their work is not going to be graded, they’re not going to do it. We saw way too many kids disengage.”

“So in the fall, teachers will be telling the kids, ‘If you’re going to be my student, you’re going to have assignments, you’re going to be graded, and it’s going to be very robust, very rigorous.‘ “

Teachers will not be expected to teach both in the classroom and online, Jarvis said — “that would cause your knees to buckle”— but will be assigned one duty or the other.

“If I had 20 online second-graders at Voyager Elementary, for instance, then I could actually re-assign one of my teachers full-time to them. If there were five at one school and five at another, and five at a third, then we might assign one teacher at the district level.”

For that reason, he said, parents will be asked to commit for a full semester at a time, so that staffing will be stable from one term to the next.

Hybrid plan rejected

Some districts, notably Tacoma Public Schools, have announced plans for a hybrid system in which students are divided into A and B groups that come to school on alternate days. PSD looked at that, Jarvis said, but found it impractical.

“If you want to reduce your school population by half, that’s one the things that works,” he said. “The downside is, we have a lot of working parents. We can’t say to them, ‘You have to find child care for every day but Tuesday and Thursday.’ For parents, that’s not a minor issue.”

The district polled about 3,500 families, and found that “the parents were very adamant that alternating school days was not going to work for them,” Jarvis said.

Bus transportation is one thing that will remain relatively normal, he said.

“That was one surprising piece of guidance we heard from the state,” he said. “They are not going to insist on 6 feet of separation on school buses.” The reasoning was that buses aren’t really full until close to the end of their run, and then only for a short time. So PHD buses will continue to run normally, although arrival times may be staggered to avoid a crush at the school door.

All of this preparation will be moot if the coronavirus blooms over the summer and schools have to be closed again. Already, there has been a dangerous surge, with 60 new cases in Pierce County in one day over the 4th of July weekend.

“This is probably one of the most complex things we have ever attempted in public education,” Jarvis said. “But we are starting with the belief that we can make it work.”

Five takeaways

Here are five takeaways from our interview with Peninsula School District Superintendent Art Jarvis.

▪ Parents will get to choose whether to send their kids back to school or keep them home to study online

▪ Online courses will be rigorous, attendance will be kept and work will be graded.

▪ Face coverings and social distancing will be required at schools. Parents will need to provide masks for their children.

▪ School buses will run normally, but masks and social distancing will be encouraged.

If the pandemic worsens and schools are closed again, the district is prepared to go all-online.

Parents can stay current with the Peninsula School District plans for fall at www.psd401.net

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This story was originally published July 8, 2020 at 12:00 AM.