A smoky, glitchy shakedown for Peninsula schools, but somehow it all came together

It was the first day of school in the Peninsula School District, and things were not going well.

Besides the usual glitches, miscues and confusion, huddled administrators were trying to deal with high winds, wildfire conditions, and concerns about air quality. To top it off, the district’s online portal crashed, just as thousands of students and their teachers were trying to begin their first online class.

Then there came another message: There was a fire at Goodman Middle School.

“It was one of those times when you kind of have to take a deep breath and say, ‘Boy, what else could happen?’ “ said Dan Gregory, one of the district’s assistant superintendents.

Fortunately, the alarm at the middle school on Sept. 8 turned out to be a small grass fire at a nearby retention pond that was easily extinguished. Because the fire also caused a power outage, students and parents who had been scheduled to meet their teachers at nearby Harbor Heights Elementary were sent home.

The online portal was quickly restored, however, and things began to return to normal — if there is any normal in a pandemic year, with most of the district’s 9,000 students studying at home.

At least, said Peninsula CFO Karen Anderson, the district didn’t have to cancel the first week of school, as many others in the county were forced to do as wildfires spread.

“We’ve been listening to their woes,” Anderson said. “It’s hard enough to do this remotely. When you add in all these other distractions, it’s pretty stressful.”

A good shake-down

The opening of in-person school that day was something of a trial run, with only special-needs students and some small, selected groups of Kindergartners returning to the buildings. Still, it was a good shakedown.

In spite of what he called “hiccups,” it was “a very positive start to the school year,” Gregory said.

Seeing even the few Individual Education Program students back in the buildings “was a great morale boost for their teachers,” he said. IEP students are those with significant physical or learning disabilities who would have a hard time online.

Even considering the portal crash, “attendance and engagement of our online students was very good” the first week of school, Gregory said.

The first-day crash, which left students and teachers staring at empty screens or error messages for about half an hour, was caused when “9,000 students and 700 staff members all tried to log on at the same time,” Gregory explained. It wasn’t really a capacity problem, he said — the servers simply hadn’t been programmed to accept that many log-ons all at once. The district’s tech staff worked quickly to reconfigure the servers, and service was quickly restored.

Smoke concerns

There was another twist this Monday, Sept. 14, when school buildings were closed again because of air-quality concerns caused by wildfires in eastern Pierce County and on the Olympic Peninsula. Staff were sent home, and all learning was conducted online.

The real test will come next Monday, Sept. 21, when kindergartners and first-graders return to their classrooms in the district’s nine elementary schools. That is being made possible by a steady improvement in coronavirus case numbers since they peaked in August. The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department has given the green light to what PSD calls “Stage 3” of its six-stage reopening plan.

The district’s plan is to call back additional grades at two-week intervals, if the health department concurs.

“We are now gearing up for families,” said Gregory, who spoke to The Gateway last Friday. “We made plans in the spring for this kind of ‘hybrid’ learning, and now we’re dusting them off and taking them off the shelves. We’re assessing the needs of the buildings, the size and furnishing of classrooms, how we’re going to keep 6-foot distancing, and so forth.”

Returning students will wear masks, wash their hands frequently, and get temperature screenings as they arrive at school. If air quality continues poor, the children will be kept inside.

Many unknowns

One snag: No one knows exactly how many K-1 pupils will show up. A straw poll among parents seemed to indicate that anywhere from 50 to 60 percent of kindergartners and first-graders will attend, but nobody is sure.

The district sent out a survey to parents over last weekend, asking, among other things, whether they would be dropping their kids off at school or letting them ride the bus.

“That is as much to inform building administrators as the transportation staff,” Gregory said, “Because we have to staff those health checks, we need to know where the children will be dropped off, and by whom.”

Bus plans are necessarily in flux, but the district’s transportation staff is already working on tentative routes, using maps based on the known addresses of enrolled kindergartners and first-graders, he said.

Since most of the district’s students — everyone in grades two through 12 — will still be studying online, technical staff are trying to plug holes in connectivity, especially on the Key Peninsula, where internet access can be spotty.

“We’re looking at some creative solutions, working with community partners, including Red Barn, Communities in Schools, and even churches who are lending a hand,” to create wireless hot spots, Gregory said. Red Barn is a nonprofit teen center that hosts after-school activities.

This story was originally published September 16, 2020 at 10:50 AM.