School starts this week for thousands of Pierce County students. Are districts prepared?
When schools closed for in-person learning in March due to COVID-19, many districts were unprepared for a remote-based platform, lacking devices, software and training needed for online learning and causing some students to be left without access.
For the past few months, district officials have been scrambling to tackle those challenges and bridge the gaps prior to the start of the new school year.
For many districts in Pierce County, the first day of school started the week of Aug. 31.
Are they better prepared?
The News Tribune asked school districts across the county how they’re bracing for a different sort of first day of school.
Andre Stout, principal at Truman Middle School in Tacoma, paused when asked if he felt ready.
“I feel good about it,” Stout told The News Tribune earlier this week. “I think when this is over, we’ll be better educators.”
Laptops for all
All Pierce County public school districts plan to return to school with remote learning this year after guidance from the health department said it wasn’t yet safe for in-person learning.
That means districts need devices for their students.
Only a handful of school districts, like Bethel, were already “one-to-one” districts, meaning they have devices for each student to use.
Other districts have since caught up.
Puyallup, Bethel, Clover Park, Sumner-Bonney Lake, Peninsula, Franklin Pierce, University Place, White River, Orting and Steilacoom school districts say they have enough devices for all their students.
Eatonville, Dieringer, Carbonado and White River school districts said they will have their devices distributed to students by the end of the week.
In Tacoma, the largest school district in the county, acquiring devices is trickier. Prior to COVID-19, the district didn’t have an immediate plan to become a “one-to-one” district. When COVID-19 hit, that took an abrupt turn, and the district began purchasing laptops in bulk. Tacoma has distributed 11,196 laptops.
Even now, the district doesn’t have enough for everyone.
“We do not have laptops available for all students to start the school year,” said district spokesperson Dan Voelpel in an email. “We ordered laptops this summer so we could have them available, but the supply chain is back-ordered. We don’t expect some shipments in until December and January.”
Tacoma has already distributed devices to grades 6-12 and expects to distribute more to grades 3-5 beginning Sept. 21, Voelpel said. Students participating in the district’s new Tacoma Online platform in grades K-2 will get laptops at their home elementary school beginning Sept. 21, while all other students in grades K-2 who don’t have a laptop at home or internet access will be supported by learning packets, contacts from their teachers and lessons airing on TV.
Teachers are being trained to use Schoology, a learning management system the district purchased for $650,000, to provide lessons to students. The system will be ready to use the first full week of school starting Sept. 14. The first day of school starts Sept. 9. In the meantime, teachers will be using Microsoft Teams, a video conferencing tool they used in the spring.
“We’re waiting until that first full week of school to use Schoology with students so all teachers have a chance to get trained and feel comfortable using it,” Voelpel said.
Wireless connection
Most Pierce County districts are turning to Wi-Fi hotspots to help connect their students to the internet.
The Franklin-Pierce School District, which serves roughly 8,000 students, will be offering 300 Wi-Fi hotspots to students who are referred by counselors. White River, serving about 4,000 students, has 200 to hand out to students that need them.
Districts also are creating partnerships with community groups to gain internet access for students. In Peninsula, the district has partnered with businesses to provide free Wi-Fi around the Gig Harbor area.
In Tacoma, the district is continuing to work with the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, which announced in August it would help connect 60,000 students statewide to the internet. The district also is working with the Foundation for Tacoma Students to get families connected to the internet with Comcast and Rainier Connect.
Attendance
At Truman Middle, one of the hardest challenges of the pandemic has been ensuring equity among its students, said Stout.
For him, that took the form of students not showing up for class in an online setting. He said his team has found a way to address the issue.
“We have a team of people that are ready to break down every barrier that came up last year that we saw,” Stout said.
The team, called the “Equity Academic Engagement Team,” is made up of about nine librarians, counselors and other staff whose jobs will be to track students who might not be participating in class and to visit the student, bringing any materials they might need. The group will be divided up by grade level.
“So teachers can have someone they can go right directly to (to say), ‘We haven’t heard from so-and-so in three days, can you figure out what’s going on?’”
Needing services
Most school districts in Pierce County say their buildings will be closed to the public for the time being.
Districts instead will deliver services, including Wi-Fi hotspots and learning packets, by bus. Many are implementing drive-thru systems at schools.
In Steilacoom, serving about 3,000 students, district director of community relations Shawn Lewis said people who drop by schools to pick up materials or ask questions need to wear a mask and complete a health assessment or be screened. School visits need to be on an appointment-only basis, Lewis said.
Like in the spring, schools will provide free meals for all students who want them. On Monday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture extended its summer feeding program, allowing all children 18 years or younger to receive free meals from their schools through the end of December.
School district are working with their unions to determine whether staff will have to work on site or at home.
Districts say they have protocols for staff to follow if they are working in school settings.
Puyallup has rolled out a return-to-worksite plan for all staff, spokesperson Sarah Gillespie said. Sanitizing commonly-touched surfaces in classrooms, offices, cubicles and meeting rooms is part of the district’s disinfecting protocol.
In Tacoma, anyone who enters the building is required to fill out a questionnaire, which asks if they have any COVID-19 symptoms or if they have been in contact with anyone who has. The questionnaire helps the department of health with contact tracing in the event of an outbreak.
In Bethel, ventilation will be set to maximize outside airflow continuously, said district spokesperson Doug Boyles.
“Filters will be used that provide the maximum filtration recommended for the HVAC equipment of the building and will be changed on a routine basis,” he said.
Students with special needs
Some families of students with special services, such as Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), said that during the spring their children lacked the in-person services needed to continue their education.
In August, several Puget Sound families filed a lawsuit against the Washington State Board of Education and the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, arguing that basic education needs have not been met for children whose learning needs cannot be met remotely.
Adrienne Stuart, who has two Tacoma students, was one of the families in the lawsuit. On Wednesday, she told The News Tribune there still are no answers as to what the learning plans will be for her son, who is on an IEP.
“I literally have no idea what our next few weeks will look like,” she said.
Tacoma’s Student Services department is working with each family to determine what their plans will look like, Voelpel said on Wednesday.
In Bethel, Boyles said they are working with each family that have students on IEPs and that one plan might not fit everyone.
According to Bethel’s website, the district plans to “use the data we collect during September to make changes as we move towards a time that students and teachers can participate in in-person instruction and services. Our students receiving special services will likely be some of the first Bethel students to be able to access this in-person instruction as we move forward in the school year.”
Returning in-person
The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department on Thursday told school leaders they could return K-5 classes to some variety of in-person learning.
On Friday, superintendents from 14 school districts — Bethel, Carbonado, Clover Park, Dieringer, Eatonville, Fife, Franklin Pierce, Orting, Puyallup, Steilacoom Historical, Sumner-Bonney Lake, Tacoma, University Place and White River — sent a letter saying they would be monitoring data and developing transition plans.
“None of our districts will bring students back before Sept. 22,” the letter stated. “Once a district decides to bring students back to school, they may need at least two weeks of operational transition time before they reopen their doors at the elementary level.”
This story was originally published September 3, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
