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Webinar Recording & Resources GOA Now you have your re-opening plan...what's next?

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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American School of the Hague

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Our Learning Roadmap offers an overview of what school at ASH may look like during the 2021-2022 school year:

1. On-campus Learning

2. Hybrid Learning

3. Virtual Learning

As the circumstances mandate, we are ready to flexibly pivot across these 3 models ensuring the continuity of engaging and flexible learning that is responsive to the current pandemic. These three models are independent and exclusive. At any single moment, we will only operate in one of these three models. Each model comes with adapted social-emotional programs and child protection policies to support the mental and physical well-being of our students as they learn at school or at home.
Since the start of the new school year we follow our on-campus learning model.
Global conditions and government responses are dynamic with frequent changes. At ASH, we will continue to follow the guidelines of the Dutch government and prioritize the health and safety of our community.

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ASH Roadmap - American School of The Hague

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Our Learning Roadmap offers an overview of what school at ASH may look like during the 2021-2022 school year: on-campus learning, hybrid learning and virtual learning. As the circumstances mandate, we are ready to flexibly pivot across these 3 models ensuring the continuity of engaging and flexible learning that is responsive to the current pandemic.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Our Learning Roadmap offers an overview of what school at ASH may look like during the 2021-2022 school year:

1. On-campus Learning

2. Hybrid Learning

3. Virtual Learning

As the circumstances mandate, we are ready to flexibly pivot across these 3 models ensuring the continuity of engaging and flexible learning that is responsive to the current pandemic. These three models are independent and exclusive. At any single moment, we will only operate in one of these three models. Each model comes with adapted social-emotional programs and child protection policies to support the mental and physical well-being of our students as they learn at school or at home.
Since the start of the new school year we follow our on-campus learning model.
Global conditions and government responses are dynamic with frequent changes. At ASH, we will continue to follow the guidelines of the Dutch government and prioritize the health and safety of our community.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
ASH Roadmap - American School of The Hague

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Our Learning Roadmap offers an overview of what school at ASH may look like during the 2021-2022 school year: on-campus learning, hybrid learning and virtual learning. As the circumstances mandate, we are ready to flexibly pivot across these 3 models ensuring the continuity of engaging and flexible learning that is responsive to the current pandemic.

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Monday night I sat on my back patio staring up into a rare, starry Chicago night. I squinted and made out each point of The Big Dipper and then turned to see what I decided was Mars, twinkling in the distance. My partner and I sat in city silence, wrapped in a perfect, nearly unrecognizable temperature-and-breeze blanket. For an hour or so we reveled in this brief peace bubble and I gave myself permission to dream:

"What if?" I thought. What if we did something different, on purpose? What if we refused to return to normal? Every week seems to introduce a new biblical plague and unsurprisingly, the nation is turning to schools to band-aid the situation and create a sense of "normalcy"-the same normalcy that has failed BIPOC communities for decades.

In her memoir, When They Call You a Terrorist, Patrisse Khan-Cullors states that "our nation [is] one big damn Survivor reality nightmare". It always has been. America's criminal navigation of the COVID-19 pandemic further highlights the ways we devalue the lives of the most vulnerable. We all deserve better than Survivor and I don't want to help sustain this nightmare. I want to be a part of something better.

What If We Designed a School Year for Recovery?

"What if?" I thought. What if Chicago Public Schools (CPS) did something radical with this school year? What if this fastest-improving urban district courageously liberated itself from narrow and rigid quantitative measures of intelligence that have colonized the education space for generations, and instead blazed a trail for reimagining what qualifies as valuable knowledge?

What if we put our money, time and energy into what we say matters most? What if this school year celebrated imagination? In We Got This, Cornelius Minor reminds us that "education should function to change outcomes for whole communities." What if we designed a school year that sought to radically shift how communities imagine, problem solve, heal, and connect?

What if this messy school year prioritized hard truths and accountability? What if social emotional instruction wasn't optional or reduced to one cute poster? What if we focused on district wide capacity-building for, and facilitation of, restorative justice practices?

What if the CPS Office of Social Emotional Learning (OSEL) had more than about 15 restorative practice coaches to serve over 600 schools? What if we let students name conflicts and give them the space, tools, and support to address and resolve them? What if restorative justice was a central part of this year's curricula?

What If We Really Listened?

What if we made space to acknowledge the fear, anxiety, frustration and confusion students, staff, and families are feeling? What if we listened? What if we made space to acknowledge the anger and demands of students? What if our priority was healing? Individual and collective. What if we respected and honored the work of healers and invested in healing justice?

What if our rising 8th-graders and seniors prepared for high school and post-secondary experiences by centering their humanity and the humanity of others? What if healthy, holistic, interconnected citizenship was a learning objective? What if we tracked executive functioning skills and habits of mind? What if for "homework" families had healing conversations?

What If We Made Life the Curriculum?

What if we recognized that life-our day-to-day circumstances and our response to them-is curricula? It's the curricula students need, especially now as our country reckons with its identity. What if we remembered that reading, writing, social studies, mathematics, and science are built into our understanding of and response to events every day?

Here are some examples in the humanities. Reading: comprehension and analysis of the perspectives put forth about the twin pandemics (COVID-19 and, as Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III has come to call it, COVID-1619). Writing: thoughtful and supported arguments for equitable allocation of federal and local resources. Social studies: design and execution of public actions that educate and empower communities.

We can do this in math and science, too. Mathematics: calculation of distribution options for COVID stimulus checks. Science: inquiry about virus transmission and the role of vaccines... the possibilities are endless.

When we structure students learning around their lived experiences and present needs, they not only develop content knowledge and skills but they grow to care about and for one another. They are equipped to collaboratively face the world they are inheriting.

This work is happening in pockets around the city. But this moment invites us to expand the degree to and frequency with which social emotional knowledge and skills, restorative practices, and culturally and socially responsive curricula are implemented.

Let's Stop Policing Our Imaginations

While reading Charlene Carruthers' Unapologetic a few weeks ago, I highlighted the lines: "Anti-Blackness works 24/7 to kill the Black imagination... The destructiveness is ongoing, chronic, but it is manifested acutely. It tells our children to dream of a better future instead of a better now, in the communities where they live."

Lately, I am acutely aware of how intentionally I have to work in order to renew my own lost imagination. How much have we snuffed out the what-if imaginations of our students with policies that police their bodies and minds, inequitably and unimaginatively distribute funding to schools, and tolerate out-of-date, counter-revolutionary curricula?

The removal of police from schools, after all, does not eliminate all forms of policing. What if we didn't police the imaginations of students?

What if enough is enough? No one is coming to the rescue. We can rescue ourselves. We must. As the fifth core assumption/belief of restorative justice states: Everything we need to make positive change is already here. We just have to let our students, families, neighbors, and friends tell us what they need. And we show up. And we learn together.

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What If We Radically Reimagined the New School Year?

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Monday night I sat on my back patio staring up into a rare, starry Chicago night. I squinted and made out each point of The Big Dipper and then turned to see what I decided was Mars, twinkling in the distance. My partner and I sat in city silence, wrapped in a perfect, nearly unrecognizable temperature-and-breeze blanket.

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When Simon's school in Maryland closed this spring due to the pandemic, his family didn't know what to expect.

"Like every family who has a kid in school, there was a lot of uncertainty," Simon's mom, Laura LeBrun Hatcher, told Vox. "Everybody was in a 'what's going to happen' moment."

But for Simon, that uncertainty also included what would happen to the one-on-one support that he needs to learn effectively, as well as the occupational and physical therapy he gets at school. Simon, who just turned 14, has complex medical needs and disabilities, including hydrocephalus, epilepsy, and autism. As the director of design and communications for the group Little Lobbyists, which works on behalf of kids with disabilities, Hatcher has been involved in advocacy for a long time. But, she said, "I'm not a trained therapist" - and providing everything at home that Simon used to get at school has been very challenging.

While Simon's school has "been great in trying to walk us through stuff and do things remotely, the quality of the therapy is just not there," Hatcher said. And "Simon's attention just isn't there for it," she added. "He's not in the environment that he is used to, where he has the structure that he's used to."

And compared with other kids with disabilities around the country, "Simon was one of the lucky ones," Hatcher said.

When schools closed their physical buildings due to the pandemic, some made an effort to continue the services and therapies that help students with disabilities access their education - even if those services had to be remote. But other schools did little or nothing to continue such services. In a survey released in May by the organization ParentsTogether, just one in said families of children in special education said they were receiving all the support services their kids were entitled to. Four in 10 said their kids were getting no support at all.

For a lot of families of kids with disabilities, virtual learning this spring "meant nothing," Maria Hernandez, executive director of the nonprofit VELA, which helps parents in the Austin, Texas, area navigate special education for their kids, told Vox. "It meant one phone call; it meant one packet."

And now, parents worry about a fall with more of the same uncertainty over whether schools will be able to provide from a distance the resources their kids need. At the same time, some students with disabilities also have underlying conditions and complex medical needs that make the physical reopening of schools a frightening prospect.

"No one has the answer," Rebecca Cokley, director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress and a parent of children with disabilities, told Vox. But one thing many advocates agree on is the need for more funding so that schools have the resources to teach all students during the pandemic and beyond. "We really need to see Congress invest additional funds to help shore up what education looks like for our kids," Cokley said.

Education is a civil right for all students. But many kids with disabilities weren't receiving it this spring.

Under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 as well as the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA), all students are legally entitled to what's called a free appropriate public education (FAPE for short). For kids with disabilities, that can include services like speech or behavioral therapy, or a one-to-one aide to support them in the classroom.

"Those are not optional things," Cokley said. "They're not nice things to do. They're fundamental civil rights."

But this year, as schools closed their physical buildings due to the pandemic, they've had to figure out what a free appropriate public education looks like in a time of Covid-19, she said.

Their responses have varied widely. For the families VELA serves, the majority of whom are low-income, "the greatest challenge that we saw was therapy services," Hernandez said.

Many families can't afford private therapy, and the services their kids get through school are often the only ones they receive. But when schools closed, a lot of those services stopped - some kids who were getting therapy once or twice a week received it just a few times over the entire spring, Hernandez said.

And receiving therapy remotely presented a lot of challenges. In some cases, parents were given a video to watch, instructing them on how to provide therapies themselves - but this required a lot from parents in terms of replicating the instructions on their own. In other cases, students did get some real-time remote therapy, but it required parents to get together a wide array of materials, find a quiet spot in their home, and then guide the child through every step of the therapy. "It was either, 'Watch this video on your own time,' which probably didn't give any benefit to the child, or, 'You need three hours to get ready for a 30-minute therapy session,'" Hernandez said. "Neither one worked."

Meanwhile, when it came to academics, the strategies that might have been workable for some students in general education classrooms simply weren't possible for many families with children in special education. A packet of exercises or a pre-recorded video lesson can be an effective teaching tool "when you're a student that has the ability to just self-pace and learn on your own," Hernandez said. "When you're a student that requires specific accommodations to be successful, and your parents are stressed and moving through life in Covid, the reality of that packet being completed or even looked at is really small."

And parents of students with disabilities have been asked to take on the roles not just of teachers but of the aides and other support professionals who ordinarily help their children learn - and who, unlike parents, have the training to do so.

For Sammy, who goes to school with Simon in Maryland, the shift to remote speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, and counseling was relatively seamless, his mom Daya Chaney Webb told Vox. Butmanaging the academic coursework was a different story. At school, teachers and staff are constantly pivoting to meet the individual needs of students, Webb said. Online, that's much harder. And Sammy has a one-to-one support professional at school. At home, that's Webb.

"It's very much hand over hand," with Webb helping Sammy do things like open tabs on his laptop browser, she said. "This is me working next to him for every moment of instruction."

For Sammy, who is going into 11th grade in the fall, the shift online has been a mixed bag. It's "easier to pay attention from home, so I don't need so many breaks," he told Vox. But, he said, he misses seeing his friends in person.

"I hope I can go back to school-school, he said. "I feel like I try harder in school."

Academics have been a challenge for Simon, too, Hatcher said. Like Sammy, he usually has a one-to-one aide at school, and while he's been able to connect with her remotely, she's no longer by his side helping him stay on task. Instead, "we'll have an online video of a book, and then a Google sheet where it's reading comprehension questions," Hatcher said. "That is not the same as being in a classroom with a special education teacher or even a general education teacher who's able to really make sure that those kids are getting the information they need."

The result: "For kids like Simon who really do need that level of support, we're not just worried about him not moving forward, we're worried about his regression," Hatcher said.

It's a common concern among parents of kids with disabilities, who are disproportionately likely to say that their kids' schooling has stalled during the pandemic. In the ParentsTogether survey, 35 percent of parents of students in special education said their kids were doing little to no remote learning, compared to 17 percent of families with kids in general education classes.

Overall, when it comes to providing the services students with disabilities need to access a fair education, "we've really seen it fall flat," Cokley said. "I have yet to hear any parents with kids with disabilities say, 'My kid got as close as possible to regular services and support in this time.'"

The Trump administration made the situation worse

Making matters worse were confusing messages from the federal government at the beginning of the pandemic.

On March 12, as schools around the country were considering or announcing closures, the Department of Education under Secretary Betsy DeVos released guidance stating that if a district "closes its schools to slow or stop the spread of COVID-19, and does not provide any educational services to the general student population," then the district "would not be required to provide services to students with disabilities during that same period of time."

Some districts responded by doing just that - shutting down education for all students in both general and special education classes, taking the attitude that "if we have to provide services equitably we just won't provide anything," Denise Marshall, CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, a group that advocates for the civil rights of students with disabilities, told Vox. In some cases, districts refused to retrieve equipment students with disabilities needed from school buildings, like an eye-gaze machine some students use for communication, arguing that "we are not providing services to anyone in person, and that constitutes in-person," Marshall explained.

Advocates were highly concerned, arguing that the pandemic did nothing to release schools from their legal responsibility to educate kids with disabilities. "There's nothing in the law that provides any kind of waiver for the obligation to provide FAPE in this kind of circumstance, or really in any circumstance," Marshall said.

On March 21, the Education Department issued a clarification telling districts that "they should not opt to close or decline to provide distance instruction, at the expense of students, to address matters pertaining to services for students with disabilities." The clarification also stated that "school districts must provide a free and appropriate public education (FAPE) consistent with the need to protect the health and safety of students with disabilities."

Still, the initial guidance "caused delay, it caused confusion, and it contributed to the inequities, and the wild variations in terms of provision of services," Marshall said.

Families and advocates are worried about what the fall will bring

Many fear those inequities will only widen this fall, as schools around the country cope with a still-raging - and, in some places, worsening - pandemic.

With little federal leadership on the issue - or on battling the pandemic more generally - state and local officials have largely been left to face the challenges of education during Covid-19 on their own. And,as with general education, schools and districts in high-income areas have often been able to provide better services to students with disabilities than those in lower-income places. For one thing, "schools that are already taxed financially don't have as high level of technology to be able to give to their students to bring home," Cokley said. And for schools already struggling to provide therapy and other supports to students remotely, a lack of adequate technology only compounds the problem.

Moreover, getting adequate services for children with disabilities can require significant parent advocacy - something that's difficult for low-income working parents even in the best of times, especially if they speak English as a second language. But during the pandemic, with kids at home and school meetings taking place over giant Zoom calls, it's become even harder, Hernandez said. "We know how intimidating those settings can be, but now we'll have this other lens of a parent sitting on their phone in the closet."

As a result, special education services, at least in Austin, tend to vary from school to school, depending on where parents have the time and resources to push for them, Hernandez said. "What tends to happen very often is the advocacy and the resources stay attached to a campus, versus a district-wide initiative."

And while there's been a lot of coverage of middle- and upper-class families exploring learning "pods" for the fall - small groups of students that meet in person while schools are closed - many fear that those won't be accessible to students with disabilities either.

For students who are able to join pods, "they'll be with other kids, it's awesome," Hernandez said. But for kids who aren't able to be part of a pod - because of their disability status, because they don't speak English fluently, because their parents can't afford the cost, or all of the above - "we think of the further isolation that's going to be happening."

Making education accessible to students with disabilities will take money - and representation

As with general education, solutions to provide special education during a pandemic are complex, to say the least.

While some pediatricians and other experts have pushed to get kids back in school as soon as possible in order to mitigate the academic and social losses associated with online learning, some students with disabilities have underlying conditions that make going to school during a pandemic especially risky for them. Simon, for example, has neurological issues, asthma, and cerebral palsy, which could potentially put him at higher risk. "We have families who are just very, very afraid of their children becoming sick and dying," Hatcher said. "I'll take regression over losing Simon."

At the same time, some kids have behavioral and other needs that are met much better in the structured environment of school. Being home with swaths of unscheduled time, away from their routines and the supports they are used to, "is incredibly stressful for the children and their parents," Hatcher said. "I see a lot of parents who are really stuck between that rock and a hard place of wanting to protect their children's health but also knowing how bad this is and how destructive this is for their children's emotional health."

There are no easy answers to any of this, but there are changes that could help. For example, districts could examine whether it's safe for therapists and one-to-one support professionals to make home visits to students while school buildings are closed. "If we had the resources to make that happen and do that safely, I think a lot of kids would benefit," Hatcher said. Some areas of the country are also considering allowing students with disabilities to come to school in person even if the school year starts remotely for others. Officials in Washington State, for example, recommended this week that schools in high-risk counties remain closed except for students with disabilities and others with the highest need.

As always, though, resources are key. To ensure equitable education for kids with disabilities during the pandemic and beyond, Congress needs to provide more funding for programs and services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Cokley said. Better funding would help ensure that schools and the families they serve have adequate technology for kids to continue their classes and therapies remotely, as well as training more teachers in special education. Districts also need an adequate staff of therapists and aides to provide services in person if and when it's possible - and that staff needs access to personal protective equipment and paid family and sick leave, Cokley said.

Additional funding is especially crucial now, as more children will likely need special education services due to the physical and emotional effects of Covid-19, Cokley added. But so far, Congress has included no additional funding for IDEA in its relief packages. "More kids are becoming disabled and no one is providing funding for it," she said.

Beyond money, schools and districts also need clear leadership from the top, many say. COPAA has asked the Education Department to provide guidance on schools' responsibilities if their buildings are open but families choose to keep kids with disabilities home out of concern over the virus, Marshall said. The group is very worried that if schools do reopen physically, they may not provide the necessary services to kids who still need to be home. So far, DeVos - who has spent much of the summer pressing schools to reopen even as coronavirus cases rise - has not offered such guidance.

And in all conversations about education during the pandemic, representation for students with disabilities is critical, Hernandez said. The voices of students with disabilities and their families - especially if those families are also low-income, people of color, or speak English as a second language - have often been overlooked in meetings about school plans, especially when those meetings themselves take place remotely. On a local level, "we're missing somebody that in every single meeting is saying, 'Right, and what would that look like for special education?'" Hernandez said. "Just that would be incredibly meaningful."

But so far, "special ed has been kind of a last thought in all this reentry stuff," Webb said. "It reinforces the way that a lot of families that support disabilities within feel kind of like society's disposables."

Instead, "people should be treated equally," Sammy said, "never judging by the color of their skin or their ability level."
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We need to talk about what school closures mean for kids with disabilities

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When Simon's school in Maryland closed this spring due to the pandemic, his family didn't know what to expect. "Like every family who has a kid in school, there was a lot of uncertainty," Simon's mom, Laura LeBrun Hatcher, told Vox. "Everybody was in a 'what's going to happen' moment."

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How to Balance In-Person and Remote Instruction - Education Week

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The International School of Kuala Lumpur

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ISKL's Health & Safety Protocols (2020-2021) MS & HS

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FAS Tampa Bay

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prioritize K-5 when reopening

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This fall, public school districts should prioritize full-time, in-person classes for grades K-5 and for students with special needs. That's the top line recommendation of a new report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

The report includes an updated review of the evidence from around the world and a set of recommendations on mitigation strategies for the virus in school settings. It adds to a hefty reading list of back-to-school guidance that now includes comprehensive recommendations from the CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Federation of Teachers, and every U.S. state except Kansas. There's a growing consensus on a few best practices across most of these reports, such as the importance of masking and social distancing.

What stands out from this particular report is its emphasis on collaboration with public health authorities and focus on not just recommendations for action now, but decision-making strategies for schools under conditions that will continue to change.

Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician and member of the committee that created the report, told NPR that it comes at a time of crisis and repeated failures.

"We failed children ethically and in three important ways. First and foremost, that we have done such a terrible job containing this pandemic. Secondly, that we closed schools...abruptly without any good plan about how to transition to distance learning and without adequate infrastructure for so many kids. And third, that the moment we closed schools, we didn't immediately start planning about how to reopen them."

Now, he says, with school months or weeks away, schools are "struggling to put together some kind of a coherent plan for how to bring kids back, if at all." In fact, with cases rising in most states, a growing number of districts from Los Angeles to Richmond, Va., are choosing to start the year virtually.

The new report makes nine recommendations. First, schools should consider that staying closed poses a serious risk to children, especially the most vulnerable children. When possible, districts should "prioritize" full-time in-person classes for the youngest children in elementary school, and for special needs children. Christakis says that this is because these two groups generally struggle the most with online learning and need the most supervision.

When it comes to mitigating the risks of COVID-19 once schools are open, the report says, adult staff should wear surgical masks, and everyone should have access to hand-washing sinks, soap and water or hand sanitizer. People should practice physical distancing and limiting large gatherings. Cleaning and ventilation are important but not sufficient, the report says. Furthermore, Christakis notes, "deep cleaning, as is currently recommended, is expensive and may or may not really make a big difference." The report also includes a recommendation that states and the federal government provide funds to schools to safely reopen.

The report also goes into detail about processes for decision-making going forward and says districts should form coalitions to make decisions on opening, school operations, and staying open. They should prioritize equity, understanding that communities of color are more affected by this virus, and that poor students and students of color are more likely to attend school in outdated and dilapidated buildings with overcrowded classrooms.

Coalitions, the report says, should work closely with local public health authorities in order to do contact tracing if someone at the school contracts the virus. This partnership should allow schools to keep tabs on the rate of infections in the broader community, which will determine whether they can stay open.

The true role of children and teenagers in spreading the coronavirus is not known. Dr. Christakis points out that "the explosions that we're seeing now all across this country are happening while schools are closed. We can't blame schools for what's happening in Florida or Arizona or Texas." Christakis says the next few months offer a crucial opportunity to finally do the research needed to help the public understand the risks that many districts are in the middle of taking right now.

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'We Failed Children,' Says Co-Author Of New National Back-To-School Report

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This fall, public school districts should prioritize full-time, in-person classes for grades K-5 and for students with special needs. That's the top line recommendation of a new report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

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Sign up for our daily EdTech news briefing today, free.

As we plan the return to physical school, educators are discussing various options. Some believe students will attend one day per week, others on an A/B schedule. Some are planning for alternating weeks while others are hoping to return full-time, while creating contingency plans if buildings must be closed again. Everyone seems to be offering students and their families with the option of full-time online learning.

Regardless of what school looks like in the fall, it seems clear that distance learning will play a role in the lives of learners for at least the short term. Thus, it is our collective responsibility to make the experience as powerful as possible while recognizing the inherent difficulties of teaching from a distance. Based on our experiences as professors of educational leadership, and those of over 70 teachers who shared their virtual classrooms with us, we have some recommendations.

Resist the Urge to Remediate

We have lost count of the number of school districts that have contacted us asking for advice because they believe that students have "fallen behind" and they need to "close the gaps" caused by school closures. Kids are where they are. Spending four weeks -- or 14 weeks for that matter -- on past content is not going to ensure that students learn at high levels.

In fact, studies of other sudden school closures (the disasters caused by the Christchurch earthquakes and Hurricane Katrina) suggest that learning loss is minimal when teachers focus on what students need to learn. Hone in on what's important for the current year and provide small group sessions, perhaps via video conference, to address students' needs.

Develop Growth-producing Relationships with Students

In his review, Cornelius-White (2007) described several elements of effective teacher-student relationships including:

Teacher empathy: understanding students' experiences, interests, values, and goals

Unconditional positive regard: warmth in interactions and feedback

Genuineness: the teacher's ability to be authentic and honest with students

Non-directivity: student-initiated and student-regulated activities that are supported by the teacher

Encouragement of critical thinking: focusing on students' thinking as opposed to traditional memory emphasis

Each of these can be established and maintained during distance learning. For example, teachers can greet students as they arrive at video conferences, provide empathetic feedback, be reliable and so on.

This is an important part of the learning process. It would be worth some time in back-to-school professional learning to focus on the value of healthy relationships. To paraphrase the late Rita Pierson, young people don't learn from older people that they don't like.

The Online Learning Environment Should be Predictable

Students should not spend time trying to figure out what they are supposed to learn and do. Instead, the sites that they access should provide clear learning expectations and instructions. We suggest that teachers plan weekly experiences that allow students some flexibility in choosing when they complete some tasks.

We have organized our learning management systems to focus on specific activities. These tasks always align with learning intentions and success criteria. Each day, teachers can provide students with suggestions and requirements (or may-dos and must-dos). For example:

Attend: What live sessions should students participate in? These may be designed for the whole class or for small groups of students. If done for the whole class, the teacher should model and demonstrate learning as well as guide students' thinking. When students attend small group sessions, the teacher can target skills and concepts that students still need to master.

Read: What readings do they need to do? And what should they do with these readings? Frequent, low-stakes assessments increase engagement and allow teachers to monitor students' understanding.

Watch: Which videos should they watch? These might include teacher lectures or those curated from other sources. As they watch, what are students expected to do? We like systems that question students during the video and provide immediate feedback. Again, low-stakes assessments increase engagement.

Discuss: What should they talk about with their peers? Student-to-student interaction accelerates learning. Thus, we need to design opportunities for students to interact with their peers in meaningful ways. Several tools can help support student collaboration. Make sure you include these in the learning design.

Practice: What independent tasks should students do and how should they submit assignments? Students need opportunities to both practice and apply what they have learned. Distance education should not only be independent tasks but students do need opportunities to complete work on their own and to receive feedback about their performance.

Now imagine that every online course in a given school used the same labels for things, such as those above. This reduces the amount of time and energy that students devote to understand what they are expected to do and more time and energy can be focused on learning the content.

Focus on Social-emotional Learning

Social-emotional learning must become more widely recognized as critical if we are going to thrive during remote instruction. Teachers need to integrate this type of learning into their lessons and not leave it to something done by someone else at some other time. For example, synchronous learning can start with an emotional check-in. Sanford Harmony provides free tools -- including the Sanford Harmony Game Room app -- that educators can use for meet-ups and buddy-ups during class time.

In addition, teachers should select texts that provide students with access to the standards and opportunities for social and emotional development. These texts might be useful as students develop their identity or they might focus on social skills. Or they might allow students to recognize emotions in others (characters or real people) and how those people regulate their emotions. If given several options for texts that address the standards to share with students, we suggest choosing the one that also provides opportunities for a discussion about social and emotional learning.

It's also important to recognize the staff's social and emotional needs. Take care of yourself. Develop morning and evening routines that signal your start and end of the workday. Take breaks and find ways to socialize with your colleagues. Have at least one extended conversation with someone outside your home each day. And if you begin to feel overwhelmed, reach out to others.

Most of us did not sign up for remote learning. We want to be with our students, guiding their learning experiences. But we are still their teachers and we didn't forget how to teach. We learned a lot from "quaranteaching" but now it's time to plan purposeful distance learning experiences for students.
Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey are professors of educational leadership at San Diego State University and teacher leaders at Health Sciences High. They are the co-authors, with John Hattie, of The Distance Learning Playbook. Like this article? Sign up for ASCD SmartBrief to get news like this in your inbox, or check out all of SmartBrief's education newsletters, covering career and technical education, educational leadership, math education and more.
More from SmartBrief Education:

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4 steps for powerful distance-learning experiences

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Sign up for our daily EdTech news briefing today, free. As we plan the return to physical school, educators are discussing various options. Some believe students will attend one day per week, others on an A/B schedule. Some are planning for alternating weeks while others are hoping to return full-time, while creating contingency plans if buildings must be closed again.

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In the fall of 2018 our school made a big shift. After twelve months of planning we launched a new daily schedule based on brain science and designed to encourage deeper learning and student wellbeing.

Three months ago, COVID-19 closed our school, along with nearly every other school in the country, and we realized we'd have to start over. Once again, we turned to research.

As we chronicled in an earlier EdSurge article, we had tried to change our school schedule once before without success. The difference two years ago was that we trained 100 percent of the teachers from PreK to grade 12 at St. Andrew's Episcopal in Maryland, where we both work, in the science of teaching and learning-which helped our staff realize the schedule we were using did not align well with the most promising research on how students learn best.

In our old schedule, classes weren't long enough for deep learning, our students were cognitively overloaded and nightly homework for every class raised anxiety and put pressure on sleep. Opportunities for things like quality feedback, deep learning and metacognition were limited, as was time outside of class for working independently and meeting with teachers.

Our revised schedule delayed the start time (to let students get more sleep), lengthened classes to 65 minutes, decreased homework and fixed many other problems. So when COVID-19 struck, we decided to keep the schedule we had in place, as though this were an extended snow day. Classes met at the same times for the same 65 minutes, but online.

We quickly learned how unsustainable this was.

How did we know? As a research-informed school, we surveyed all our constituencies-teachers, students, parents and caregivers-and a certain alignment emerged. At least 87 percent of each group believed that class was too long and too challenging for attention.

To create a new plan, we balanced what we know about developmentally appropriate amounts of screen time with research on the importance of teacher directed instruction (particularly one paper with a title that should be on everyone's mind as they plan distance learning: "Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work").

Basically, we believed an effective distance learning plan needs high quality direct instruction from teachers who are able to guide learning and keep students on task, along with time away from the screen for students to practice, create, read and explore-"homework" reimagined. This blended approach was the basis of the schedule in the Distance Learning Plan we developed.

But how did we use the time? We know that one thing will never change. The brain, whether learning on campus, fully online or in a blended environment, is the organ of learning. So the same research from the field of Mind, Brain and Education that we used in 2018 to create our new at-school schedule became the starting point for designing what distance learning should look like as well. Because we understand the underlying principles that help students learn, we were able to reimagine school online, rather than just trying to recreate the same bricks and mortar experience. What must online school include? And how do we do it?

Sample of a revised schedule from St. Andrew's.

We concentrated on creating an even better balance between the academic growth, social and emotional development and overall well-being of our students. We sought to reduce screen time by shortening class periods and elevating offline independent work, which we supported through targeted faculty professional development to help staff understand that research on homework is unequivocal; the quality of assignments has a much greater impact than the quantity of minutes spent.

These changes allowed us to start later, at 9:00 a.m., and end class time earlier, boosting well-being and engagement. It also allowed students more time for non-screen-time work, as well as to pursue non-school passions and find some balance in their lives.

Importantly, we built in 15-minute breaks between classes and a larger slice of time to meet with advisors and teachers during Office Hours. Lunch was lengthened so students could eat with siblings, parents or guardians-or online with classmates for elementary students, which proved extremely popular.

We also knew that the anxiety and weirdness of our current times had created an increased executive functioning struggle. So we made classes start on the hour, with the same basic routine each day. And each week is exactly the same-we have that mythical unicorn schedule, the 5 day rotating block.

We realized we could teach less content as well as give less homework by focusing on essential questions and core competencies. We asked ourselves the question, "What do I want my students to still know, value and be able to do in two years time?" Less important things can go.

Feedback both from and to students was critical. We knew that gaining insights into what students did and did not currently know would be harder, so we included more low- or no-stakes formative assessments, and used them to guide the teaching we did and the assignments we set. We knew that the feedback we gave students would be more crucial than ever, so we made sure we designed lessons and assignments that gave students smaller, more regular doses of very targeted feedback.

We elevated project-based learning that didn't revolve around screens. But we also made sure we took a research-informed approach to project-based learning. Teachers used direct instruction to impart core knowledge, and gave students formative assessments to make sure they understood the material. Projects were then used as a means of getting students to transfer these skills to a new context. The timing was perfect for this-late in the year, a lot of background knowledge had already been put in place. It is much more impactful to craft projects that force students to transfer knowledge to new contexts than use projects to learn new concepts.

We taught our content better by making informed choices of when and where to use edtech tools. Before choosing any tools, we decided on our learning objects and matched them to science of learning objectives. Afterward, we launched elementary and secondary school versions of a " Science of Learning Field Guide " that helps teachers find the right tool for where their students are in the learning process.

Online learning has reminded us of something Dr. David Daniel, one of the founders of the field of Mind, Brain and Education, once said about students: "They have to want to learn." It is why we are closely looking at the research of Chris Hulleman and others at the University of Virginia's Motivate Lab, and research of purpose and relevance from the Mindset Scholars Network.

Online learning has also reminded us that cognition and emotion are highly intertwined, both in the brain and in each child's everyday lived experience. We continue to look at the work of Mary Helen Immordino Yang at the Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning & Education (CANDLE) and Pam Cantor and the TurnAround for Children team for guidance.

Our schedule is still a work in progress. But we will leave you with an insight from one of our students, who said that "distance learning has all of the elements of school, but none of the fun stuff," which raises two points. First, how does the next iteration of our schedule bring back the fun and elevate social connection should we remain at a distance of more than six feet apart? And second, how do we include the end-user experts in the plans we make? We may not yet know what the fall will bring, but there is expertise-from research, teacher experience and student's insights-that can guide us.

Agility and flexibility isn't something that just happens. But by helping teachers and leaders understand the fundamental principles of how students learn best, we can design for it no matter what the future brings.
Glenn Whitman (@gwhitmancttl) is director of The Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning (CTTL) at St. Andrew's in Potomac, Md. Ian Kelleher (@ijkelleher) teaches science and is the Dreyfuss Chair for Research at CTTL.

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How Brain Research Helped Retool Our School Schedule for Remote Learning - EdSurge News

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In the fall of 2018 our school made a big shift. After twelve months of planning we launched a new daily schedule based on brain science and designed to encourage deeper learning and student wellbeing. Three months ago, COVID-19 closed our school, along with nearly every other school in the country, and we realized we'd have to start over.

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For older students who are able to tele-school-high schoolers and some middle schoolers-distance learning may be a safer option, unless there is little or no virus circulating in the community.

Third, keep the virus out. Schools should forbid nonessential visits and require everyone who enters the school-not only students and staff but also parents, delivery people, and maintenance workers-to wash their hands (or apply hand sanitizer) and wear a face mask. Families must understand that their children should not go to school when sick. Class attendance policies should be revised to reflect the urgency of staying home when ill, and absences should not require a doctor's note. Every person who works at a school, including staff members, contractors, and maintenance workers, must be given paid sick leave. Paid sick leave has been demonstrated to significantly reduce the risk of ill people continuing to work and spreading infection to others.

Fourth, wear a mask. Students, teachers, and staff should all wear masks throughout the school day, although this may be challenging for younger children. Consider adopting reward systems to encourage mask wearing and hand-washing.

Fifth, reduce mixing among students and staff. Divide students into smaller cohorts, or pods, that stay together throughout the day, rather than mixing and re-forming different class units. Remaining primarily within a smaller unit reduces the risk of extensive disease spread and makes contact tracing easier if there are cases. Staff break rooms should be closed: In hospitals, many employees became infected while socializing with other employees.

Sixth, reduce occupancy, especially indoors. Classrooms may need to operate at reduced capacity to provide increased physical distance. Schools can alleviate overcrowding by moving to a split-shift schedule (incorporating morning and afternoon sessions) or by alternating students between in-person and remote learning. Classrooms can be rearranged to reduce transmission, such as by having desks facing the same direction. If conditions allow, holding class outdoors is safer.
Emily Oster: Parents can't wait around forever
Seventh, implement new health and safety protocols, such as more frequent and thorough cleaning and disinfecting, including of buses. Hand-washing and sanitizing stations should be installed; their use should be required. There will need to be more cleaning during the day, when classes are in session, as well as at the end of the day. That will require safe usage and storage of cleaning products, to protect children from exposure. Sharing of classroom supplies and other items should also be limited; when sharing is necessary, equipment should be disinfected after each use.

Eighth, prepare for cases. Despite precautions, there will inevitably be coronavirus cases at schools. Schools must function as if the virus could arrive at any moment, and operate so that they can reduce transmission and provide ongoing education when it occurs. Responding well can prevent outbreaks; detailed and rehearsed protocols will enhance readiness. Daily temperature and symptom checks are advisable. Students or staff members who become sick must stay home in isolation until they have met the CDC's criteria to return. All contacts of new cases must be traced and quarantined. Any classroom with a reported case will need to be thoroughly disinfected and, if necessary, closed temporarily. Schools should also prepare to close if necessary because of outbreaks or explosive spread in the community.

Reopening schools will not be easy, but if we all work together to stop the virus, we can succeed. Our children's future depends on it.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Thomas R. Frieden is president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives (an initiative of Vital Strategies), senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and former commissioner of the New York City Health Department.

Arne Duncan is a managing partner of Emerson Collective (the majority owner of The Atlantic), a former U.S. secretary of education, and a former superintendent of Chicago Public Schools.

Margaret Spellings is the president and CEO of Texas 2036, and a former U.S. secretary of education.

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Thomas R. Frieden, Arne Duncan, Margaret Spellings

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These 8 Basic Steps Will Let Us Reopen Schools

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For older students who are able to tele-school-high schoolers and some middle schoolers-distance learning may be a safer option, unless there is little or no virus circulating in the community. Third, keep the virus out.

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Safely reopening schools is hard. In the midst of challenging conversations about how we can do so, the most sensible, creative idea isn't getting enough traction:

We should reopen elementary schools first (or as the top priority), while also sending back academically vulnerable upper grades students (ex. kids with IEPs) for intervention.

The elementary-first idea aligns with the key realities about reopening schools:
1. Studies show that younger kids are less vulnerable to COVID-19 and unlikely to transmit it - generally, and in school reopening case studies.
The growing body of evidence on kids & COVID suggests low risks associated with reopening schools in regions with low community transmission. It's particularly reassuring with regard to elementary students.

If you read two things on what we've learned about kids and school-based transmission, read:

A solid overview of international case studies in The New York Times noted that troubling cases were centered in upper grades:

"The findings suggest that older children may be able to transmit the virus more easily than younger children.

That pattern may also be reflected by the experience in Israel, where one of the largest school outbreaks, involving about 175 students and staff, occurred in Gymnasia Rehavia, a middle and high school in Jerusalem.

There are different theories about why older children would be more likely to transmit the virus than younger children. Some scientists say that younger children are less likely to have Covid-19 symptoms like coughs and less likely to have strong speaking voices, both of which can transmit the virus in droplets. Other researchers are examining whether proteins that enable the virus to enter lung cells and replicate are less abundant in children, limiting the severity of their infection and potentially their ability to transmit the virus."

I believe that we haven't seen enough coverage of these studies in the media. The school reopening conversation has been a raging dumpster fire, driven by emotion; these studies could inject some much-needed reason.

For additional reading on kids, COVID, and schools, this USA Today column contains loads of links to studies, while also closing with a recommendation to open elementary-first. Also, John Bailey penned an excellent thread. Overall, the studies leave me comfortable about reopening, especially for elementary grades.
2. Safe reopening requires space. So let's spread out the littlest learners across buildings.
A benefit of reopening elementary-only is the opportunity to use buildings districtwide for the K-5's, alleviating space constraints concerns.
3. In distance learning, emerging readers are the most academically vulnerable. We MUST give all students reading foundations.
Learning to read successfully by third grade is key to children's long-term outcomes.

The distance learning experience raised a lot of questions about our ability to teach reading remotely to our K-2's.

We heard anguished cries from K-1 teachers about unique challenges of remote instruction. Parental assistance was essential because kids can't read assignments independently, yet teachers couldn't always count on parents to be available as co-teachers. Teachers talked about fundamental challenges in delivering a phonics lesson remotely ("can kids see my mouth well enough if they are on a phone?"), and they named practical issues, like the inability to keep six years olds from running off to play.

If - as many educators assert - distance learning had an outsize impact on teaching and learning in early grades, that creates significant long-term risk because of the 'Matthew effect:': early success seeds exponentially greater long-term success. In addition, abundant research has shown that early intervention is far more impactful than later intervention. How can teachers intervene early if they are barely seeing K-1 kids?

Because of all of these factors, many educators believe that K-1's face the greatest long-term academic risk, because critical instruction was greatly compromised this spring. Can we afford to prolong that in '20-21?

Kindergarten and first grade establish essential reading foundations, as kids learn how to break down and recognize words. They pick up oral language and new vocabulary, and ideally enter grade 2 able to navigate grade-appropriate books successfully and fluently. Second grade is an essential year for targeted intervention with the students with skill gaps leaving first grade.

In fact, elementary learning is designed around the assumption that kids learn to read by the end of second grade. By third grade, curricula assume that kids are proficient readers.

Reading skills affect success in every other area of study. The need to look at K-2's as a vulnerable class academically should compel us to consider an elementary-first return.
4. Parents of K-5s are the most impacted by closures.
Parents carry a massive load in distance learning for children who cannot yet read. My daughter was a proficient reader in second grade when schools closed, it felt like a huge blessing that she could sit with a device and read the lesson instructions without help. Parents of K-1 students basically need to turn into part-time lesson proctors.

Then there is the childcare factor. Teachers don't like when we talk about school-as-childcare; it makes them feel undervalued, and I get that. But as a society, we have to talk about how we support working families. Schools are obviously a safe haven, and elementary-aged children need minding to be home alone. Middle and upper-grades students are more likely to be safe at home alone while parents work. We support families by getting little ones back to school full time; hybrid schedules that bring kids back to school part-time are hardly a solution for working parents.

Slow Momentum for the Idea

A number of thoughtful folks have begun promoting this idea. Sarah Cohodes came to similar conclusions from an economist's perspective. Michele Caracappa describes it as the 'student-centered approach,' and Chad Aldeman and Ashley Darcy-Mahoney endorsed the idea in USA Today.

Also, at least one district is running with this approach. New Orleans (NOLA) is bringing back PK-4 in the traditional model, with upper grades doing a hybrid model.

Yet I don't hear most superintendents talking about it, and that worries me. I'm afraid that superintendents will feel pressure to bring all kids back in an equivalent fashion, when everything tells us that all grades are not equally-impacted. Mind you, if superintendents are in districts where everyone can safely go back full time, good for them! But, before districts opt for schedules that compromise instruction for all kids, I hope they will consider these student-centered options.

I hope we can bring this conversation to more districts before the school reopening plans are cast. By all means, send this to your local superintendent if you think it makes sense.

Plenty More to Consider

There's much more to consider in the how-to-reopen equation. I'm not unpacking all of the important variables, but it's a long list... schools must consider the rate of local community transmission; avoid contact among adults, both staff and parents; they need provisions for protecting teachers, especially teachers with health risks; they need plans for what happens if outbreaks occur in schools; and more.

I'm not addressing those important factors. I simply hope to advance the elementary-first and vulnerable learners-first ideas in the reopening conversation, because they feels like no-brainers.

Districts can also open elementary schools as phase 1, and use the experience to consider additional grades in the phase 2.

Our school reopening plans cannot be a monolith. Folks appreciate that we'll need to vary reopening plans by region, based on local levels of COVID transmission. Why not vary by grade level-slash-degree-of-student need, when the argument is so compelling?

Post-Script

Since publishing, I've heard from a few superintendents that they are looking into / looked into this approach, and they like it, but they need to work through staffing. Others have asked, "How do you staff this?" Admittedly, staffing is a key consideration.

The answer is inherently local: a function of local class size norms; how many families send kids back to school (some will inevitably opt out; there is talk of a big drop in K registrations as families hold kids out an extra year) and practical matters like available space in classrooms for distancing. This idea might require schools to reallocate some teachers towards elementary grades and/or repurpose special subject teachers. I didn't say it was easy - I said it was important, and since some districts are heading this direction, possible.

Also, I have heard other commenters reflect my fears: that districts will be afraid to bring back some kids and not others. One superintendent expressed his dislike of the idea by saying it "sends the message to secondary students you don't matter," and went on to express his concerns about middle schoolers' social-emotional learning. I don't want to downplay the social-emotional impacts for the kids that stay home, but I would like to remind everyone of the research showing that struggling readers in grade 3 show greater rates of anxiety and depression by grade 5, along with many other downstream risks (check out this thread).

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The Least Worst School Reopening Idea: Elementary-First

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Safely reopening schools is hard. In the midst of challenging conversations about how we can do so, the most sensible, creative idea isn't getting enough traction: We should reopen elementary schools first (or as the top priority), while also sending back academically vulnerable upper grades students (ex. kids with IEPs) for intervention.

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Guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics encourage "having students physically present in school." Dr. Sean O'Leary, an author of that advice, explains why.

"So much of our world relies on kids being in school and parents being able to work," said Dr. Sean O'Leary, who helped write guidelines emphasizing that there are major health, social and educational risks to keeping children at home. Credit... Kyle Grillot/Reuters

The American Academy of Pediatrics has a reputation as conservative and cautious, which is what you would expect from an organization devoted to protecting children's health. But this week, the academy made a splash with advice about reopening schools that appears to be somewhat at odds with what administrators are hearing from some federal and state health officials.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, have advised that remote learning is the safest option. But the academy's guidelines strongly recommend that students be "physically present in school" as much as possible, and emphasize that there are major health, social and educational risks to keeping children at home.

Dr. Sean O'Leary, a pediatrics infectious disease specialist at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, helped write the academy's guidelines. He is a father of two children, 12 and 16, and a survivor of Covid-19 who is still experiencing some symptoms after he and his wife contracted the coronavirus in March.

"I absolutely take this seriously," Dr. O'Leary said. "I'm still sick." But he explained why the academy was emphasizing the need to get students back in classrooms.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. The academy guidelines place a big emphasis on the importance of physical school over remote learning. Can you summarize why?
As pediatricians, many of us have recognized already the impact that having schools closed even for a couple months had on children. At the same time, a lot of us are parents. We experienced our own kids doing online learning. There really wasn't a lot of learning happening. Now we're seeing studies documenting this. Kids being home led to increases in behavioral health problems. There were reports of increased rates of abuse.

Of course, the reason they were at home was to help control the pandemic. But we know a lot more now than we did then, when schools first closed. We're still learning more every day.

This virus is different from most of the respiratory viruses we deal with every year. School-age kids clearly play a role in driving influenza rates within communities. That doesn't seem to be the case with Covid-19. And it seems like in countries where they have reopened schools, it plays a much smaller role in driving spread of disease than we would expect.
Back in March, there was this idea of children as silent superspreaders who put older adults and other vulnerable people at immense risk. Has that picture changed?

What we have seen so far in the literature - and anecdotally, as well - is that kids really do seem to be both less likely to catch the infection and less likely to spread the infection. It seems to be even more true for younger kids, under 10 or under 12. And older kids seem to play less of a role than adults.

Here in Colorado, I've been following our state health department website very closely. They update data every day and include the outbreaks in the state they are investigating. As you can imagine, there are lots and lots in long-term care facilities and skilled nursing homes, some in restaurants and grocery stores. There have been a total of four in child care centers, and we do have a lot of child care centers open. In almost every one of those cases, transmission was between two adults. The kids in the centers are not spreading Covid-19. I'm hearing the same thing from other states, as well.

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Studies have shown that the abrupt switch to remote learning in the fall left many students behind and increased existing achievement gaps. Credit... John Moore/Getty Images

The academy's guidelines talk about balancing the need for physical distance with children's educational and developmental needs, such as the need for hands-on play. They suggest that if older students are masked, three feet of distance between desks might be sufficient, compared to the six feet recommended by the C.D.C. Why is your advice different?
I don't know that we're different. The C.D.C. said six feet if "feasible." The point we are trying to make is, that's really not feasible. When you consider the overall health of children and really the community at large, adhering to a six-foot rule, which would mean having a lot of kids at home, may not be in the best interest of overall health. Something has to give.

From our perspective as pediatricians, the downsides of having kids at home versus in school are outweighed by the small incremental gain you would get from having kids six feet apart as opposed to five, four or three. When you add into that other mitigation measures like mask wearing, particularly for older kids, and frequent hand washing, you can bring the risk down.

I do think it's a balance. I'm not going to come out here and say on June 30 that everything is going to be perfect in the coming school year. There will be cases of Covid-19 in schools even where they make their best efforts. But we have to balance that with the overall health of children.

As I talk to school administrators, most are planning temperature checks. The academy guidelines warn this could be impractical and take away instructional time. Can you say more about why you're skeptical that this is the right strategy?
Do the harms outweigh the benefits? In this case, if it means students are congregating, it could increase the risk of spread. And we don't have great evidence that temperature screening is helpful. That's for a couple reasons. One, a lot of kids who have Covid-19, perhaps the majority, never get a fever. To use fever as a screen and assume that's going to be good enough? You will miss a kid. And many fevers are not going to be Covid-19. Kids should not go to a school with a fever, period.

Is it harder to exercise while wearing a mask?

A commentary published this month on the website of the British Journal of Sports Medicine points out that covering your face during exercise "comes with issues of potential breathing restriction and discomfort" and requires "balancing benefits versus possible adverse events." Masks do alter exercise, says Cedric X. Bryant, the president and chief science officer of the American Council on Exercise, a nonprofit organization that funds exercise research and certifies fitness professionals. "In my personal experience," he says, "heart rates are higher at the same relative intensity when you wear a mask." Some people also could experience lightheadedness during familiar workouts while masked, says Len Kravitz, a professor of exercise science at the University of New Mexico.

I've heard about a treatment called dexamethasone. Does it work?

The steroid, dexamethasone, is the first treatment shown to reduce mortality in severely ill patients, according to scientists in Britain. The drug appears to reduce inflammation caused by the immune system, protecting the tissues. In the study, dexamethasone reduced deaths of patients on ventilators by one-third, and deaths of patients on oxygen by one-fifth.

What is pandemic paid leave?

The coronavirus emergency relief package gives many American workers paid leave if they need to take time off because of the virus. It gives qualified workers two weeks of paid sick leave if they are ill, quarantined or seeking diagnosis or preventive care for coronavirus, or if they are caring for sick family members. It gives 12 weeks of paid leave to people caring for children whose schools are closed or whose child care provider is unavailable because of the coronavirus. It is the first time the United States has had widespread federally mandated paid leave, and includes people who don't typically get such benefits, like part-time and gig economy workers. But the measure excludes at least half of private-sector workers, including those at the country's largest employers, and gives small employers significant leeway to deny leave.

How many people have lost their jobs due to coronavirus in the U.S.?

The unemployment rate fell to 13.3 percent in May, the Labor Department said on June 5, an unexpected improvement in the nation's job market as hiring rebounded faster than economists expected. Economists had forecast the unemployment rate to increase to as much as 20 percent, after it hit 14.7 percent in April, which was the highest since the government began keeping official statistics after World War II. But the unemployment rate dipped instead, with employers adding 2.5 million jobs, after more than 20 million jobs were lost in April.

What should I do if I feel sick?

If you've been exposed to the coronavirus or think you have, and have a fever or symptoms like a cough or difficulty breathing, call a doctor. They should give you advice on whether you should be tested, how to get tested, and how to seek medical treatment without potentially infecting or exposing others.

As you were preparing these guidelines, did the emergence of the potentially deadly pediatric inflammatory syndrome The guidelines emphasize that teachers and school staff members should stay physically distanced to the greatest extent possible and conduct meetings remotely. But I am hearing from a lot of teachers. Many are, frankly, scared to go back to school before a vaccine is available. A few have told me that they feel that their health is treated as expendable. What's your message to them? linked to Covid-19 sway you at all?
We talked about it. It is by any measure a rare condition. And so it's something we have to pay attention to and figure out what causes it and the best treatment. We should also point out that even those kids who have gotten very sick, the vast majority of them have recovered and done well.

We're pediatricians. We're not educators. We don't want to tread in space where we don't belong. But what I would say is it depends on the level of risk for the individual person. Every district I have talked to here in Colorado? They are making major considerations for their teachers, trying to figure out how to keep them safe.

There are a couple of things we know now that we didn't know when we closed schools down in March. One is that masks really do seem to work. They are very effective. Two, physical distancing works as well. If they are taking as many precautions as they can, I think the risk is pretty low.

Some of these are very personal decisions. But schools can do a lot of things to really make the environment as safe as possible.
What do you hope is next in terms of local schools making specific plans to reopen?
How this gets rolled out in August or September when schools reopen is really dependent on what is going on at that time with the virus. If you're in a state that is doing well with very few cases, all of the measures in the guidance are far less important. But if you're in a place where the virus is raging, all of those things become much more important.

As a country, we have to get on the same page. It's a tragedy to me that the virus has become a political issue. It's costing tens of thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands, of lives.

Reopening schools is so important for the kids, but really for the entire community. So much of our world relies on kids being in school and parents being able to work. Trying to work from home with the kids home is disproportionately impacting women. So it goes beyond just the health of the child, which is, of course, very important. As a country, we should be doing everything we can right now, for lots of reasons, to make sure we can safely reopen schools in the fall.

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Why a Pediatric Group Is Pushing to Reopen Schools This Fall

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Guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics encourage "having students physically present in school." Dr. Sean O'Leary, an author of that advice, explains why. The American Academy of Pediatrics has a reputation as conservative and cautious, which is what you would expect from an organization devoted to protecting children's health.

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It was Dr. Anthony Fauci who pushed back, in the early days of the pandemic, on the understandable desire for timelines: "You don't make the timeline, the virus makes the timeline," he noted tersely, in response to a reporter's question. The implications of that simple statement have become clearer as the crisis drags on, with no definitive end in sight.

But if there are still plenty of unknowns, there's also a pattern of forward momentum as countries around the world-and more to the point, various communities within those countries-begin to open the doors to their businesses, schools, and other institutions. One dictum has given way to the next: Just a few days ago, Fauci appeared to endorse school openings in the U.S. in the fall, particularly as the viral activity in some areas decreases. "In some situations there will be no problem for children to go back to school," said Fauci. "In others, you may need to do some modifications." Schools in rural Montana may look nothing like schools in New York City in the fall, in other words, and it wouldn't be surprising to see some physical schools closed as the traditional school year starts.

To get a sense of what the new normal looks like across the world, we read global news reports and then reached out on social media to teachers who are back in school. We received a torrent of responses: More than 600 teachers from over 50 countries joined the conversation, with many leaving detailed descriptions of their schools' reopening policies. We followed up with email and Facebook interviews with 20 of those teachers, generating about 50 pages of further documentation.

Here's our synthesis of the responses we received from educators worldwide-we hope it helps.

The Big Picture-Things Are Going Well

While more than a few educators told us that they worry about new outbreaks, a clear majority of teachers reported they are happy to be back in school-and so are the students.

Despite all the new rules and restrictions, younger students "get out of cars or off the bus in the morning with gigantic smiles" and are delighted to see friends and teachers, said Laura Landers, a primary school leader in the Netherlands. In China, high school biology teacher Christopher Noordhoek's students "were really struggling with anxiety and depression during the height of the pandemic." The return to school has "not only brought them a sense of normalcy and routine but also a network of friends and teachers to keep each other grounded."

The return to school has been far from perfect. Teachers reported that it has left them "exhausted" and anxious, and the learning curve for remote teaching remains steep. Some felt like they had been asked to come back too early. Still, most of our respondents agreed that kids were learning effectively in classrooms, that the return to school was a good idea, and even that technology integration, while challenging, was improving pedagogy around the world.

Alternate Day Attendance Is the New Normal

The complicated logistics of social distancing-the choreographing of arrivals and exits, in-school transitions, and seating arrangements, for example-tend to break down when there are too many bodies in motion. Kids crowd each other as they line up to exit a classroom or get their temperatures checked, admitted several teachers. Younger children forget rules quickly. In Auckland, New Zealand, high school teacher Constance McCombe told us that social distancing is "an impossible task for teenage girls. They get close, they touch, they hug."

Being realistic about the limitations of rules and protocols is crucial, then, and in our interviews it was clear that many schools around the world-in Greece, the Netherlands, Germany, Singapore, Canada, and Cyprus, among others-have addressed the overcrowding at the root of the problem by splitting classes in half and going to an alternate day schedule.

In the Netherlands, explains primary school leader Laura Landers, echoing an approach that has been adopted around the globe, "half the class attends school in person on Mondays and Tuesdays, while the other half does distance learning from home. Then we swap." On Wednesdays all students learn remotely, the building is deep cleaned, high-needs students receive more individual attention, and educators plan lessons and hold crucial meetings to address emerging issues and kinks in the system.

There are some variants on the alternate day theme. Some schools, for example, tried splitting the student population into morning and afternoon sessions, but we suspect that's a more complicated solution-and Landers agreed. In Singapore, an employee at the Ministry of Education reported that the student groups attend class on alternate weeks. And in Australia, at least initially, some schools initially brought individual grades back for only one day of the week.

No Matter What You Do, You'll Need Good Technology

There appears to be no clear path to reopening without some form of online learning. A bewildering array of factors globally forced the issue.

In Canada, a staffer who works with students with special needs reported that medically fragile students were staying home and required online support. In the Netherlands, wrote primary school teacher Erin Comaskey-there were similar stories from countries like New Zealand, Germany, and Israel-"approximately 50 percent of families chose to continue with distance learning instead of returning to campus" when schools opened back up. Vulnerable teachers in several countries said they stayed home and taught via Zoom to a classroom monitored by another staff member. In a school in China, a handful of educators resorted to distance teaching when they were trapped on the other side of the country's closed borders.

But that's only part of the story. Staff meetings are held online to protect vulnerable members of the community, and school assemblies often occur as synchronous broadcasts to classrooms across the building. Flipped classrooms and blended approaches are emerging as new, durable models around the world. In Greece, writes secondary school teacher Erato Kostopoulou, in a burst of excitement, "we even tried an online debate tournament in which we competed with a local school in Thessaloniki, and it worked very well!"

Perhaps most importantly, a strong technology foundation can provide flexibility and continuity if the virus re-emerges and postpones reopenings or forces another round of school closures-as it has already in France, Israel, and South Korea-or when, as we heard from China, remediation or extended hours are needed to make up for significant learning loss among students.

Watch for a Special Case of Teacher Burnout

It's tempting to think of the new teaching paradigm as short-term, and of solutions as mere Band-Aids to get you to the next phase of reopening-but that appears to be a recipe for early teacher burnout.

Worldwide, educators who responded to our questions reported that they were struggling to manage both distance and in-person learning simultaneously. The "face-to-face teaching hasn't changed," according to Charlotte Holmes, a teacher near Adelaide, Australia, but "we have had added teaching to do in the form of online content. As to be expected, this has increased our workload." If a hybrid model is to work well for any period of time, close attention to this issue appears to be vital-and models that recognize and seek to reduce the workload for teachers are likely to be much more successful.

What can be done? In Luxembourg, middle school teacher Emily Lewis Agraz says that she uploads virtual lessons on Monday for the week, and then holds virtual and in-person class for all students at the same time. Virtual breakout rooms allow for grouping across the divide, but they're imperfect-a "far cry from the normally dynamic, interactive lessons many teachers plan." Secondary school teacher Michelle Kaszuba from Frankfurt, Germany, takes a similar tack: Some lessons allow for a "hybrid learning situation where you are engaging the entire class in both realms," she writes, "while for others it might be best to work directly with the kids in the room, while those at home are working independently-and then they will flip tasks the next day."

Not far away, in the Netherlands, school leader Laura Landers says that assigning a greater proportion of independent work is a key, since "teachers are busy in the classroom and cannot do as much online support."

She also implemented an all-hands-on-deck policy, pulling in staff who are not classroom teachers to lend a hand with distance learning. Other leaders have temporarily reassigned faculty members from larger classes that cannot yet meet, like band, chorus, and theater.

Yes, the Play Goes On

Teachers (and parents) are especially worried about kids losing outdoor playtime. "I would not want my young child sitting at a desk all day, no recess, lunchroom break, or moving classrooms," posted New York high school teacher Leah Dyan on Facebook-and more than 500 members of our audience expressed agreement. "That would be terrible for children."

But teachers told us that play continues during the pandemic. In Busan, South Korea, for example, where classrooms are back to full capacity following a six-week shutdown, kids have playtime at their desks for now and do solo activities like origami or classroom games. For young kids, of course, that's unlikely to suffice for long.

And there's better news, too. In our review of comments and in our interviews, we found that outdoor recess remains an integral part of the school day in countries from Germany to New Zealand, Canada and the Netherlands-even as adults enforce playground rules around social distancing and post-recess hygiene.

Monkey bars, slides, and other playground equipment are still in use, though the structures are frequently cleaned, writes Jodi Hirsch, a kindergarten teacher in Israel. Games that involve tossing balls back and forth or frequent touching, like the game of tag, are discouraged. Already, teachers report, kids have invented an alternative in which the shadows of their peers are tagged as the game progresses.

Other rules that appeared frequently across the globe: staggered times for recess to eliminate congestion, and designating areas of the playground for each class to discourage unnecessary mixing of groups.

Still In Motion at Some High Schools (and Middle Schools)

While a CDC report on school reopening did advise that schools "restrict hallway use through homeroom stays or staggered release of classes," there were not detailed guidelines for how that might work. The report did note that "not all strategies will be feasible for all schools" and that "limiting hall movement options can be particularly challenging in secondary schools."

We found that middle and high school students in countries like China, Germany, New Zealand, and Luxembourg are, in fact, transitioning between classes-and while it involves a fair amount of preparation and staff oversight, teachers say it's mostly manageable. "It's a team effort," says middle school principal Carol Wallace from Stavanger, Norway. "The one meter rule is by far the hardest for our middle and high school students to maintain. They need constant reminders."

Around the world, hallways are taped off to keep kids in lanes; lockers are mostly off limits; arrows direct the flow of student traffic; and teachers are positioned at critical spots where kids tend to crowd or bump into each other. That last part can be challenging, according to Luxembourg's Emily Lewis Agraz: "We also have to clean desks after each class, so the combination requires some smooth moves."

Even on Health and Safety, Changing Protocols

There's plenty of publicly available information on health and safety protocols in schools-from mask-wearing to testing for sickness and elevated temperatures. Unsurprisingly, we found that the rules and regulations were already shifting as communities around the globe entered new phases of the pandemic.

Frequent handwashing and cleaning of high-touch surfaces like door handles, desks, and classroom materials to mitigate viral spread remains the mainstay globally. In fact, we heard from some teachers that handwashing is such serious business, it's included in their daily schedules, often between five and 10 times a day.

Our teachers expressed concern about wearing masks-many wondered if they could breathe effectively, and language teachers thought the masks would be a particular burden. "How do you communicate clearly to young children while teaching wearing a mask?" asked Jen Judson Grantham. "I hate that we cannot share smiles." In many locations, masks were still required for both students and teachers-that's the CDC recommendation as well, though they hint at exceptions for students-but masks are no longer frequently worn in countries like Australia, Norway, and New Zealand, for example, and even in China, where the virus first struck, a decline in cases has meant a relaxation of the standards around mask-wearing.

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Teachers Around the World Tell Us Reopening Is Tough, but Joyful

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It was Dr. Anthony Fauci who pushed back, in the early days of the pandemic, on the understandable desire for timelines: "You don't make the timeline, the virus makes the timeline," he noted tersely, in response to a reporter's question. The implications of that simple statement have become clearer as the crisis drags on, with no definitive end in sight.

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They're disinfecting classrooms in South Korea, keeping a safe distance apart in France, practicing their hand washing in Denmark and having their temperatures checked in Belgium. For children heading back to school around the globe, the coronavirus pandemic means lots of new rules.

"We can't give hugs anymore," lamented 10-year-old Clara in France. "It won't be the same, but at least it can help stop the virus."

So far, CBS News correspondent Holly Williams reports the reopening of schools in 22 European countries has not brought any major spikes in infections, though there have been a few hiccups, and some have only been open for a couple weeks.

At one school in Belgium, they've replaced the school bell with the theme tune from "Star Wars" - an attempt to inject some fun at a stressful time for students, teachers and parents alike.

For many parents, there's still worry, even if coupled with relief.

Pandemic underscores Africa's digital divide as schools move online

More than 1.5 billion students have had their schooling interrupted by the COVID-19 crisis, according to the United Nations. While some have the resources to learn at home, many others are missing out entirely on weeks or even months of education.

Danish elementary schools were the first to reopen in Europe, last month, but some parents claimed their young children were being used as guinea pigs and argued older students should have gone back first.

Denmark begins opening schools amid coronavirus lockdown

The country's Education Minister told CBS News it was a tough decision.

"The small children have more difficulties with the distance learning than the older children, and therefore we started out with the young children," Minister Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil told Williams.

Taiwan is already an old hand at the "new normal." It only closed its schools for two weeks in February.

At Dajia Elementary School, the children have to disinfect their hands and shoes before they walk into the building, and before every class.

Dr. Tara Narula answers viewer questions about child safety as states reopen

Masks are compulsory, and students eat lunch behind individual desk dividers. They're even learning how to correctly measure one meter of "social distance" in their math class.

It's all a bit of a hassle, one group of 12-year-olds told Williams. They want things to go back to how they were.

School may never be exactly the way it was again. But for millions of children around the world, the first step back to normality may be getting back into the classroom.

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centers for disease control and prevention

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Millions of kids around the world adjust to school in the coronavirus era

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They're disinfecting classrooms in South Korea, keeping a safe distance apart in France, practicing their hand washing in Denmark and having their temperatures checked in Belgium. For children heading back to school around the globe, the coronavirus pandemic means lots of new rules. "We can't give hugs anymore," lamented 10-year-old Clara in France.

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Much of the world remains on some form of lockdown. But as countries slowly start to loosen restrictions, that has meant schools are back in session for in-person instruction.

What does the classroom look like during a pandemic? As places such as China and Denmark reopen their countries, they provide answers to -- or at least experiments in -- how social distancing and safety protocols play out.

Face masks, to a degree

Face coverings are a common sight as school children return to their desks. China has been rolling out school reopenings over the past several weeks, from Hubei to Chongqing to Guangdong. And from province to province, students and teachers are sporting face masks, with a few exceptions, like during gym class or lunch.

In France, where a majority of schools reopened this week, masks are required for students ages 11 and up. In towns such as La Grand-Croix and Val-de-Reuil, primary school students have been wearing protective visor caps.

In Germany, where schools started to reopen last month, mask regulations vary by state. They are required for everyone age 7 and up in Bavaria, for instance.

Social distancing indoors and out

How do you enforce social distancing in crowded classrooms and during recess? One way is to have students on a staggered schedule to limit classroom and hallway capacity. New South Wales, Australia's biggest state, reopened schools on Monday, with students attending in person one day a week and learning from home the rest.

Another solution is to move classes outdoors. In Denmark, which started reopening schools in mid-April, classes are being held outside, such as in parks, as much as possible.

Some schools are enforcing social distancing through means like plastic partitions during lunch, seen in Taiwan, and individual chalk squares for outdoor play, observed at a preschool in Tourcoing, France.

Tests and screenings

The World Health Organization recommends daily temperature checks for students as part of schools' COVID-19 public health measures. In Shanghai, students and staff enter school through thermal scanners. At Montana's rural Willow Creek School, one of the first schools to reopen in the U.S., students' temperatures are checked upon entrance.

COVID-19 diagnostic testing is also being done on school grounds. Testing is commonplace in Wuhan, where students line up along cones to give swab samples. A high school in Neustrelitz, in northern Germany, has students self-administer tests twice a week, according to The New York Times. If they test positive, they stay home for two weeks; if they test negative, they wear a green sticker.

What to know about the coronavirus:
Tune into ABC at 1 p.m. ET and ABC News Live at 4 p.m. ET every weekday for special coverage of the novel coronavirus with the full ABC News team, including the latest news, context and analysis.

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How schools around the world are reopening during the coronavirus pandemic

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Much of the world remains on some form of lockdown. But as countries slowly start to loosen restrictions, that has meant schools are back in session for in-person instruction. What does the classroom look like during a pandemic?

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Child mental health experts have urged the government to prioritise children's play and socialising with friends over formal lessons and academic progress when schools in England reopen and lockdown restrictions are eased.

They say they are "extremely concerned" about the impact of the lockdown and more than six weeks without face-to-face play with peers on child mental health. They are calling on ministers to ensure that play is at the top of newly permitted activities.

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The UK government has said that these five tests have to be met before they will consider easing coronavirus lockdown restrictions:

The NHS has sufficient capacity to provide critical care and specialist treatment right across the UK

A sustained and consistent fall in daily deaths from Coronavirus

Reliable data to show that the rate of infection is decreasing to manageable levels across the board

Operational challenges including testing and personal protective equipement (PPE) are in hand with supply able to meet future demand

Confident that any adjustments to the current measures will not risk a second peak of infections that overwhelms the NHS

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They are also calling for children to be allowed to play with their peers without social distancing as soon as it is safe to do so, based on a "risk-benefit approach", recognising the benefits while ensuring children are not exposed to unnecessary risk.

Helen Dodd, professor of child psychology at the University of Reading, said: "Returning to school after a long period at home will be challenging for lots of children. It will be especially challenging if they are expected to remain 2 metres away from their friends.

"We ask that, once it is safe to do so, the loosening of lockdown is done in a way that allows children to play with their peers, without social distancing, as soon as possible. This may mean that close play is only permitted in pairs or small groups or within social bubbles that allow repeated mixing with a small number of contacts."

The experts, who specialise in child mental health and development, warn that children will be suffering from loneliness and isolation after being required to stay at home as part of the national effort to stem the spread of coronavirus.

While ministers will be keen for schools to kickstart academic studies and begin the process of catching up on work missed, the panel of experts who represent five universities including Cambridge and Sussex, say play will be essential to help relieve stress and anxiety among children.

In a letter to the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, they write: "At this time, many children's emotional health will be suffering due to loneliness and isolation. As experts in children's mental health and development we urge the government to prioritise children's social and emotional wellbeing in all decisions related to the easing of lockdown restrictions and the reopening of schools."

Focusing on children aged 3-11, they recommend a series of measures to support children as the country emerges from lockdown, asking the government to ensure that children have the time and opportunity to play with their peers, both in school and outside.

They say schools should be given the necessary resources and guidance on how to support children's emotional wellbeing as schools reopen and that "play should be a priority during this time, rather than academic progress".

While many parents and teachers will be anxious about educational progress and health risks, the experts say the government's public health message must highlight the social and emotional benefits of play and socialising with peers.

"We hope that when policy decisions are made in the coming weeks and months that children's emotional health is given the consideration it deserves," the letter says. "Poor emotional health in children leads to long-term mental health problems, poorer educational attainment and has a considerable economic burden."

The panel based their recommendations on a " rapid review " of academic literature exploring the harmful impact of isolation on children and the alleviating benefits of play, including one study which found that children who experienced quarantine or social isolation in previous pandemics were five times more likely to need mental health interventions than those who did not.

Sam Cartwright-Hatton, professor of clinical child psychology at the University of Sussex, said: "All the research indicates that children's emotional health is suffering in the lockdown and it seems likely that this suffering will, in many cases, continue into the long term. We are urging ministers and policymakers to ensure that children are afforded substantial, and if possible enhanced, access to high-quality play opportunities as soon as possible."

Dr Jenny Gibson, senior lecturer in psychology and education at the University of Cambridge, added: "It's easy to dismiss play as unimportant, but for children, playing with friends and classmates has a very significant impact on their social development.

"Critically, it is an important way of working through emotions and will therefore be one of the principal ways in which they cope with the isolating effects of the lockdown. For that reason it's important that whatever steps are taken to ease social distancing restrictions, children are given time and space to play with friends."

A government spokesperson said: "We recognise the importance of children and young people's mental health and wellbeing during the coronavirus outbreak. That is why we have published guidance to schools and families about how best to support children and signposted resources to help them to do so.

"Mental health support continues to be available for those that need it. NHS services remain open and leading mental health charities are being supported to deliver additional services through the £5m coronavirus mental health response fund."
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Prioritise play when schools reopen, say mental health experts

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Child mental health experts have urged the government to prioritise children's play and socialising with friends over formal lessons and academic progress when schools in England reopen and lockdown restrictions are eased. They say they are "extremely concerned" about the impact of the lockdown and more than six weeks without face-to-face play with peers on child mental health.

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CLOSE

Setting up an internet-based classroom is one thing, and certainly not an easy one at that: new technology to implement and troubleshoot, lessons to rewrite.

But what on earth does a digital gym class look like?

As schools around Vermont grapple with mandated remote learning for the next two-plus months due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, physical education teachers must adapt on the fly to a situation that has shredded the foundation of how they do what they do.

COVID-19 is the official name of the disease related to the coronavirus that first started to affect people in China at the end of 2019. In the latest, sweeping response to the outbreak, Gov. Phil Scott on Thursday announced the closure of Vermont's schools for in-person instruction through the end of the current academic year.

COVID-19 and education: Vermont's students will continue remote learning for remainder of the school year

It's an answer to the problem that prompts more questions. For instance, how can a student practice a volleyball serve without a ball, or a net, or a partner available at home?

"It's hard to teach that not being there, having kids have access to volleyballs, someone to do it with ... it's a myriad of things," said Dean Corkum, a longtime physical education teacher at Essex High School. "We're still working through it."

It's a whole new game.

"Now as a PE teacher you've got to adapt and learn Seesaw, Zoom and Google classroom. Those are all new concepts for us to get kids moving," said Paul Pecor, a physical education teacher at Porters Point School in Colchester. "Everything we do is contact with kids, everything is hands-on. That's why this is so tough."

Said Corkum: "For me the hard part is not having the face-to-face contact with them, because that's the best part of my day."

At least 30 minutes of exercise each day

At South Burlington's Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School, the roughly 570 kids in grades 6-8 are expected to get 30 minutes of exercise a day and log that activity in a Google document for teachers.

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South Burlington field hockey coach Anjie Soucy meets with the referees and the captains and coaches from Mt. Mansfield before the start of their match in South Burlington on Wednesday, September 27, 2017. (Photo: GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS)

Read more: What you and your kids need to know about Vermont schools' remote learning plan

Their instructors monitor the input, then provide personalized feedback and interaction with each student. On Fridays, the teachers offer links to YouTube videos with different workouts that kids can try at home.

"Trying to keep track of all that is really time-consuming," said Anjie Soucy, one of Tuttle's two physical education teachers.

"I'm literally at my computer all day," said Soucy. "The kids we haven't heard anything from, we're trying to reach out to them. I'm not used to being at a computer (this much) - this is out of my comfort zone."

'Thinking outside the box is what you have to do'

A group of fifth graders play with a parachute with Physical Education teacher Andrew Rose (center) during Global School Play Day at Woodside Avenue Elementary School in Franklin Lakes on Friday February 14, 2020. Global Play Day was started by educators to bring awareness to the decreasing amount of play in children's days. (Photo: Anne-Marie Caruso/NorthJersey.com)

With younger children who require more supervision, implementing technology is even trickier.

The venerable and popular parachute can't spring to life this year without the 15-20 kids required to make it soar. Suggesting neighborhood tag or capture-the-flag games isn't an option either.

After connecting with each of his K-2 school's classrooms during the day and asking kids what they've done to be active, Pecor said the next step is devising games and activities kids can do at home. The tricky part is threading the needle between being engaging and not too demanding of parents' time.

"Thinking outside the box is what you have to do," Pecor said."The important thing now more than ever is to get kids moving."

'Relying on their integrity'

High schoolers' capability with apps and web-based platforms has aided the transition to remote learning for some aspects of physical education, Corkum said.

Students can check in with teachers on days they would've been in class, sharing workouts or photos of themselves in action.

"With technology where it's at these days we've never been better prepared to have it be remote learning even though it's a really difficult thing to do," Corkum said. "We're relying on their integrity to know if they're getting the workouts done."

It works well for fitness-based classes and independent-study lessons. But skill-based units in specific sports are a particular challenge, as is providing instruction for over a hundred students when they aren't subdivided into groups of 15 or 20.

The abrupt closure of school hallways means logistics are still evolving each day.

Some students are realizing their gear is still in lockers at school - in rooms they aren't allowed to access. But class must go on. And each day offers another chance appreciate for the former status quo.

"The one thing I'd take away from this is online learning is not the same as person-to-person," Soucy said. "It's just not."
Contact Austin Danforth at 651-4851 or edanforth@freepressmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @eadanforth. All coverage of the coronavirus is being provided for free to our readers. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Free Press.
Read or Share this story: https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/2020/03/27/vermont-physical-education-teachers-adapt-school-closures-digital-gym-class/2927609001/

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Teachers are worried about the learning gaps that students may have at the beginning of next school year, and they support non-traditional options to try to get students back on track, such as grouping students by competency level rather than age, or "looping" students to the next grade with the same teacher.

They're also concerned about health and safety if buildings open up again in the fall-and they want districts to make a bigger push to get digital devices in the hands of every student if school buildings stay closed.

That's according to a new, nationally representative survey from Educators for Excellence, a group that advocates for teacher leadership. Six hundred public school teachers responded to questions about instruction during the school shutdowns, their perspective on distance learning, and their hopes for next year in a survey conducted from May 2 through May 8.

The image of instruction during the shutdowns that emerges mirrors much of the Education Week Research Center's findings , in its periodic surveys of teachers and administrators throughout the pandemic.

By this point, as reflected in both the E4E and the Education Week surveys, the vast majority of teachers are now conducting some sort of distance learning. Of the teachers who are delivering instruction, most are using digital tools.

But though teachers are logging on for lessons, there are glaring and persistent inequities in students' learning experiences during this time.

About a third of the teachers in the E4E survey said that 50 percent or fewer of their students participated in lessons daily. (In the latest Education Week survey, teachers said that 23 percent of their students were essentially truant-not logging in or making contact.) Teachers who work with students from low-income families say that devices, internet access, and having a quiet place to work are bigger barriers for their students than teachers who work with students from high-income families.

"We knew this crisis was having a disparate impact on historically marginalized students, but educators' experiences show that we will need to prioritize vulnerable students as we move forward," Sydney Morris, the co-founder and co-CEO of E4E, said in a statement.

Instructional Gaps, Safety Are Major Concerns

In late spring, though, there are still a lot of questions about what moving forward will look like-even as states start to release guidance on reopening school buildings and planning for the next academic year.

The E4E survey asked teachers what they wanted to see in districts' plans.

When it comes to instruction next year, teachers were most concerned about students' academic gaps and social-emotional health. But they also worry that they will be held to unrealistic expectations about how quickly they can get students back on track-45 percent said these expectations were their biggest concern about returning to the classroom, above prospective budget cuts or physical health issues.

To address learning loss, most teachers-60 percent-would prefer to include remediation within the regular school day. Fifty-six percent also supported tutoring and after school programs. Other options, like lengthening the school day or the school year, were less popular.
See also: Most Teachers Don't Want to Extend the Next School Year, Survey Shows
Teachers also supported some less traditional ideas to address learning gaps. Fifty-eight percent said they would be in favor of grouping students by competency, rather than age, and 54 percent said they supported looping-moving students to the next grade level with the same teacher.

Some school systems are already considering as an option for next year. D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Lewis D. Ferebee has suggested the strategy , as a way to minimize the academic and social-emotional effects of the shutdowns. Maryland state education department guidance for next academic year also showcases looping as an option. "Since looping takes advantage of teachers' familiarity with students, it may be even more beneficial in the current situation because no state, and likely no local assessment data will be available to teachers," the guidance reads.

Outside of teaching and learning, one of the highest priorities for teachers is safety. When asked what were the most important steps for districts to take when school reopens, 52 percent of teachers said health and sanitation measures, while 51 percent said creating smaller class sizes with staggered schedules.

About a quarter said that districts should allow teachers with underlying health conditions to continue distance learning until the chance of catching the virus is lower.

The results reflect the concerns that some teachers at higher risk of complications from COVID-19 have already voiced about returning to school buildings . Another poll released this week , from USA Today and Ipsos, found that 18 percent of K-12 teachers surveyed said they would likely not return to school if buildings opened without social distancing guidelines.

Teacher Layoffs?

Even as school systems start planning to reopen buildings, state leaders have warned that rolling shutdowns are a real possibility next school year.

If distance learning is going to continue in any form, teachers say, getting tech in students' hands should be first priority.

When asked what districts should focus on in preparing for future remote instruction, 52 percent of teachers said providing students with the necessary learning tools, including digital devices. Teachers rated this as most important, above getting access to high-quality online curriculum, or receiving clear guidance about their duties in an online environment.
See also: Why Helping Families Access the Internet Is So Challenging
They also want more direction in providing special education services. Sixty-five percent of teachers in the E4E survey said that the federal government should prioritize issuing guidelines for districts to develop "temporary substitutes for the obligatory supports, even if they aren't as effective (e.g., virtual sessions with therapists)."

Another likely outcome next year: budget cuts . What if districts start to consider teacher layoffs? Most teachers-78 percent-said that before turning to layoffs, districts should consider buyouts: offering older teachers financial incentives to retire early.

And if layoffs do occur, 64 percent of teachers said they should be based on multiple factors, rather than just seniority or performance alone.

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What Teachers Want: 'Looping,' Grouping by Ability, and Digital Devices, Survey Says

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Teachers are worried about the learning gaps that students may have at the beginning of next school year, and they support non-traditional options to try to get students back on track, such as grouping students by competency level rather than age, or "looping" students to the next grade with the same teacher.

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School district leaders from around the U.S. rethink education, emphasize online learning

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National roundtable discussion includes two California superintendents from Oakland and Stockton Unified.

Theresa Harrington / EdSource

Theresa Harrington / EdSource

As education leaders mull how to bring students back to schools safely, they are also wrestling with how to better educate children who were falling behind before the pandemic.

Access to computers and the internet, especially in so-called "digital deserts," is key to the long-term success of students, said the leaders of five of the largest districts in the country. Mike McGee, CEO of the Chiefs for Change, a network of 40 superintendents from diverse backgrounds, political perspectives and regions throughout the nation, said expanding access to devices and the internet to all students is a top priority for his organization.

The group discussed how they are serving students now and what they need going forward during a virtual Superintendents' Roundtable hosted by the New Teacher Center, a national nonprofit organization focused on improving teacher training.

In a matter of weeks after schools closed due to the coronavirus, the leaders of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the New York City Department of Education, Chicago Public Schools, Oakland Unified and Stockton Unified got online education programs up and running, the districts' respective superintendents said Thursday. While these efforts were largely successful, the education leaders said barriers included limited access for some students that exacerbated existing academic gaps and the need to quickly train teachers in a new way of delivering instruction, while also striving to meet students' social and emotional needs.

Kyla Johnson-Trammell, superintendent of Oakland Unified, said her district is focusing on teacher training with the idea that everyone is learning right now, including veteran educators who may not be comfortable with technology or who have trouble building strong relationships with students. Teachers, she said, must be encouraged to innovate, make mistakes and keep trying in the face of adversity.

"Teaching is an art and a science," she said. "We need to figure out how to take quality teaching practices and translate them to virtual settings."

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Amid pandemic, Oakland Unified extends superintendent's contract, hires business officer

Although the district is looking at budget cuts next year, Johnson-Trammell said it must focus on "reductions with students first and equity in mind" while investing in "supporting teachers as learners." It's critical, she said, to view this as "a learning moment if we want to have a different system at the end of this."

The leaders also agreed that it is important to forge partnerships with local organizations and businesses to fill funding gaps. Oakland Unified, for example, created an " Oakland Undivided" campaign to close the digital divide by supplying computers and internet access to 25,000 Oakland students and their families, which has already raised $12.5 million.

Janice Jackson, CEO of Chicago Public Schools, said her staff is creating an online curriculum and has accelerated teacher training, "discarding things that don't work because students can't access them."

Related

Oakland Unified helps seniors overcome graduation challenges

The leaders agreed that schools cannot return to what was considered "normal" in the fall. Instead, they said school officials must seize this moment to rethink education with an eye toward creating a more equitable system that will meet the academic and social and emotional needs of all students, including those who are low-income, homeless and suffering from trauma in their homes and communities. Distance learning, they agreed, is likely to continue next year.

"There were a lot of kids in crisis before this most recent crisis," said Alberto Carvalho, superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools. " ...It took a health crisis for some to recognize that we needed to address that."

John Deasy, superintendent of Stockton Unified , said it's important to find ways for students to connect with each other socially, as well as academically, during remote learning. The school closures, he said, have made him realize "how corrosive isolation could be," especially in poor communities.

Academically, he said, students will need intensive tutoring to help make up for lost instruction, as well as to close the achievement gap.

"My biggest worry is that there's a rush to go back to normal," he said. "And I think that is very worrisome because normal wasn't serving all youth - not even close to it."

McGee is lobbying the Federal Communications Commission to change a regulation that currently prohibits districts from distributing devices or internet connectivity purchased with federal E-Rate federal dollars to students for use in their homes. Currently, all E-Rate funding must be used to improve connectivity at schools and libraries.

"The FCC could change that overnight and it would make a big difference," he said.

Richard Carranza, chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, who previously headed up school districts in Houston and San Francisco, said his greatest fear is that policymakers who control education budgets may not be concerned about equity and may "hatchet away our budget." But Carranza said "we're going to need all of it" to provide internet connectivity, teacher training in distance learning and supports for students who live in poverty and are experiencing an academic slide that "is really accelerating."

He is also concerned about how the coronavirus can affect children and how they could spread it even though they don't have symptoms. Carranza said he and other school leaders across the nation are considering how the potential to spread the virus affects classroom configurations, transportation and the roles of each person in the district.

"We're rethinking everything we do," he said. "There are no sacred cows, because sacred cows make the best burgers in this kind of an environment. Everything's on the table."

Carvalho said his district plans to tackle learning loss "for kids who have been underwater for a long time" with virtual tutoring during the summer. "If we wait until August," he said, "the depth of the cliff will be even greater."

The leaders all warned that current budget constraints caused by the economic crisis will impede their ability to provide the kinds of resources schools will need to help students overcome the learning loss they have experienced over the last three months since the pandemic virtually shutdown most schools nationwide. Funding is also needed to make schools safe for students and staff to return to, they added.

Related

Bay Area educators help families in school districts hurt by coronavirus shutdowns

It is important to make federal and state officials aware of inequities that have existed between students in affluent and poor communities for generations, creating "opportunity gaps" that require more money to solve, they said.

In addition, the leaders said "emergency" modifications to regulations that allowed schools to distribute food from the federal food program to all students no matter which school they attend should be made permanent because they give schools the flexibility they need to feed all students.

Districts are also looking for flexibility in the number of days and hours of instruction required as they consider distance learning or a hybrid of blended learning options, said McGee, whose organization released a report earlier this month called " The Return," which looked at how schools may restructure in new ways in the fall. Districts are considering how they can "accelerate learning" so students can catch up on what they've missed and "redefine the roles and responsibilities of every adult in their system" to provide more technical support, as well as academic, social and emotional support, he said.

NEW: Our report, produced in partnership with @JHUEdPolicy, outlines relevant research and provides key recommendations for reopening K-12 schools. More here: #COVID19 https://t.co/5dimpF1SYf pic.twitter.com/OIpmTleMT1

- Chiefs for Change (@chiefsforchange) May 14, 2020

The leaders stressed the importance of building teams of adults who can support students' diverse needs, instead of relying heavily on one classroom teacher. These teams could include lead teachers with curriculum expertise, along with those who could work with small groups, tutors, social workers, counselors, technology experts, nurses and other support staff, as well as after-school program and community organization staff, they said.

Besides supporting the emotional needs of students, Chicago's Jackson and other leaders said they are also focusing on supporting their employees, who may experience fear and trauma related to the coronavirus.

"I think there are things we can't even anticipate that we will be faced with," Jackson said, adding that her district is committed to training staff in responding to student behaviors triggered by trauma. "This is a crisis like none other. We can't discount what our educators are going to be feeling and experiencing coming back into space they may not feel is safe, after being isolated for months... We have to take care of the adults so they can take care of the children. That's the place we're leaning in on because we think that's going to give us the biggest bang for our buck to deal with this."

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School district leaders from around the U.S. rethink education, emphasize online learning

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Theresa Harrington / EdSource Theresa Harrington / EdSource As education leaders mull how to bring students back to schools safely, they are also wrestling with how to better educate children who were falling behind before the pandemic.

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After the coronavirus interrupted schooling for more than 1.5 billion children worldwide, some of them are heading back to the classroom - and offering lessons for American students and educators.

In Germany, students administer coronavirus tests on themselves to track if they have the disease or not. In Vietnam, children and adults get their temperatures checked before entering the school building and wear masks once inside. And in New Zealand, parents or students worried about returning too soon can delay returning until they feel comfortable.

These and other policies aim to help resume schooling safely and end the months of disruptions that experts say hurt students and caused excess stress for teachers worldwide. Some experts consider school restarts worth the risk, since young people aren't as vulnerable to the disease as older people, though the data on whether or not kids can spread the virus much remains inconclusive.

There's no one-size-fits-all solution, and not every idea has worked perfectly. But if there's one silver lining from the United States reopening schools later than other countries due to its large coronavirus outbreak, it's that it now has time to learn from their attempts.

"It's a huge opportunity to rethink how we deliver these services," said Robert Schwartz of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. "The old American exceptionalism in education is breaking down a bit, so maybe leaders will look abroad at how others are bringing kids back to school."

Here are three countries' methods that should have American educational leaders taking notes.

Germany has coronavirus testing in schools

In mid-May, the New York Times told the story of Lea Hammermeister, a 17-year-old high school junior in the small northern German town of Neustrelitz. Before going to class, she grabbed a coronavirus test kit, swabbed her throat, and then properly prepared the device for evaluation. Later that night, she received the result in her email: negative. That allowed her to wear a green sticker, which means she can walk freely about the school without a mask.

It's a procedure Hammermeister and her classmates follow every four days to keep tabs on Covid-19's spread within her school. She and others told the Times that they appreciate the program, as it helps students feel safe in the classroom and allows parents and other caregivers to work without having to also care for their children during the workday.

"Schools are the spine of our societies and economies," Henry Tesch, the school's headmaster, told the New York Times. "Without schools, parents can't work and children are being robbed of precious learning time and, ultimately, a piece of their future."

Such a testing program isn't in every German school, but it's one that many others might adopt in the near future.

In the meantime, schools in Germany continue to follow new directives for reopening schools: Hallways are now one-way avenues, masks must be worn in classrooms, seats are assigned and spaced far apart, and everyone is encouraged to wear heavier clothing as windows must be kept open to improve air circulation. All of that is in addition to already common practices such as keeping a 6-foot distance between students when standing in line.

But implementing these measures has come with challenges. For example, some schools simply can't fit every student inside the building if they are to maintain social distancing. In the Neustrelitz high school, only about a third of the student body can be in class at a time - and even then, a teacher might have to teach two groups in two classrooms at once.

Still, keeping tabs on the disease through testing and minimizing exposure is one of the better ways to keep the lessons going.

Vietnam requires mandatory masks and temperature checks

Vietnam, which used testing and contact tracing early and aggressively to get a handle on its outbreak, continues to use similar methods to reopen schools.

After a three-month hiatus, Vietnam's 22 million school-age students were allowed to return to their classrooms this month after first passing a mandatory temperature check at their school's entrance. If a child doesn't have a fever, they're allowed to attend classes, but they must wear a mask throughout the entire school day. One school in Hanoi, the capital, bought 10,000 masks to ensure it had enough for students to use.

Some may find wearing a mask for hours cumbersome, but 11-year-old Pham Anh Kiet, who attends a western Hanoi school, doesn't mind. "I feel safe when I wear a mask and have my temperature checked, I am not afraid of being infected with the virus," he told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on May 4.

As in Germany, Vietnam's schools are also enforcing social distancing measures. However, Nguyen Xuan Khang, a head teacher in Hanoi, told AFP that maintaining separation could pose a challenge for younger students. "They are very active," he said.

Another challenge will be sanitation: About 30 percent of Vietnamese schools don't have access to running water or soap, according to the government's own data. That means hand-washing for 20 seconds won't be a ubiquitous practice among students, increasing the chances of a possible outbreak.

Still, the widespread use of masks in Vietnamese schools may minimize that risk.

New Zealand has a "transition arrangement" option

Not everyone, though, is ready to return to school. New Zealand's government recognizes that and has offered a pathway to allow parents to send their kids to school only when they feel comfortable doing so.

New Zealand's schools resumed classes on May 14, but students and parents who thought that date was too soon were allowed to opt for a "transition arrangement" with their school.

"We also know that children and young people's wellbeing is important and there may be students whose parents are anxious about their return to school, as indeed the students themselves may be. In these instances, we can help you work through a transition arrangement that will take longer than the period of time talked about here," New Zealand's Ministry of Education stated this month.

However, the government provided no real clarity on what such an arrangement would look like or for how long it should last. Those details were left up to the schools, all but assuring a lack of uniformity in the kind of "arrangements" agreed to throughout the country.

Yet experts say the government's decision to allow for some flexibility and individual decision-making by families will help with promoting mental health in the pandemic, not just physical well-being.

Schwartz, the Harvard education expert, doesn't believe all these ideas are foolproof but offered some of his own, mainly having schools invest lots of money in developing teachers into better online educators. He thinks having US officials learn from other countries' experiences with reopening schools is a worthwhile endeavor.

"The US is notorious for not thinking it can learn from the world, but it should be in this case," he told me.
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What the US can learn from schools reopening abroad

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After the coronavirus interrupted schooling for more than 1.5 billion children worldwide, some of them are heading back to the classroom - and offering lessons for American students and educators. In Germany, students administer coronavirus tests on themselves to track if they have the disease or not.

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As the current school year comes to a close, looking and functioning nothing like what any of us could have imagined mere months ago, another challenging school year looms ahead. Although nearly every U.S. state has begun, in varying degrees, to reopen businesses and relax lockdown restrictions, there is still little certainty-or consensus-as to what the future of education holds this fall.

In a new guide released today by the Washington, D.C.-based think tank New America, the three authors-an instructional designer and two former teachers-lay out four possible scenarios for what school will look like in the 2020-21 school year, based on present understanding of the COVID-19 virus and health experts' advice for school re-openings.

For starters, the authors note that there is little reason to believe that a "normal" school year is within reach. In fact, the authors-Kristina Ishmael, senior project manager of the Teaching, Learning and Tech team at New America; Rebecca Heiser, a lead instructional designer at Pennsylvania State University's World Campus; and Jennifer Payne, an educational technology coordinator at an online school in Colorado-hardly even considered a return to previous education arrangements in their projections.

This is in part because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released guidance advising schools to refrain from re-opening until they are able to screen students and staff for COVID-19 symptoms or exposure to anyone with symptoms, and until they can protect students and staff who are considered high risk, should they become infected.

All four scenarios laid out in the New America guide are predicated on the idea that distance learning will, in some way, be folded into every school's plans for the coming year.

Also underpinning these various scenarios is the critical need for professional learning and development over the summer.

What has taken place during the last two-and-a-half months, the authors contend, is "crisis distance learning," brought on by near-ubiquitous restrictions on movement and stay-at-home orders since March. "The spectrum of crisis distance learning ranged from 'drive-by' course material pickups to telephone check-ins to haphazard online lesson plans and ad-hoc video conferences, all of which can be considered a low-fidelity migration to support continuity," the authors write.
For more news about how COVID-19 is changing education, check out the weekly EdSurge Podcast. Subscribe on iTunes or wherever you listen.
School staff should use the summer break to pause and catch their breath, and re-evaluate how they approached distance learning this spring. Administrators should take the time to invest in their staff, ensuring that everyone is on the same page and creating a fluid, on-the-fly plan for transitioning from face-to-face instruction to distance learning in the event of a COVID-19 outbreak during the school year, the report suggests. The summer is also an opportunity for educators to improve the quality of their remote instruction, in the event they must teach remotely again.

Below are summaries of the four scenarios the authors lay out. As they write, "none are perfect solutions-each has its own set of challenges and drawbacks and we recognize that each district is approaching this from different contexts, depending on levels of funding, resources and support up to now."

1. Brick to Click Learning

The gist: The school district will begin the academic year with traditional, in-person classes, but will have planned and prepared for an outbreak that causes the school community to transition swiftly to distance learning.

The details: Over the summer, teachers will receive training in delivering online learning and will be flexible and able to transfer their in-person instruction to an online environment. The likelihood of another outbreak is "relatively high," so staff will need to move quickly. "For example, if the number of cases jumps quickly mid-week, the district would send home instructional materials within 48 hours and then continue learning online the following week," the report describes. "This scenario requires all educators, support staff, students, parents, and caregivers to remain nimble in the likelihood that there are quick changes in the way learning is accessed."

2. Click to Brick Learning

The gist: The school district will continue online learning in the fall, monitoring public health benchmarks and communicating with local government and health personnel to determine when it is safe to return to brick-and-mortar classrooms.

The details: Over the summer, teachers will receive training in delivering online learning. All academic content will be taught online for the duration of the school year. Any potential reopening will prioritize not instruction but advising and relationship building.

Should the school re-open to allow for face-to-face interactions, students can expect to come for half days or every other day, to adhere to existing social distancing guidelines. In this scenario, school staff will need to take special care to account for students' mental health, technical problems, social-emotional needs and individualized support services. They will also need "to consider online learning the primary method of working towards competency in a grade level and/or content area, while in-person learning is focused on relationship-building and developing non-academic skills."

3. Blended learning

The gist: The school district will offer a hybrid learning environment, in which both face-to-face instruction and online instruction are provided in a consistent, easy-to-follow schedule throughout the year.

The details: Over the summer, teachers will receive training in delivering blended learning. The school will choose from one of several blended learning models. One possible route would be to offer in-person instruction one day a week and online learning the rest. Younger students, who need more assistance and supervision, may need to attend in-person classes more frequently than older students. This scenario, while asking the community to use both online and in-person learning simultaneously, would make a school well-positioned to respond to a COVID-19 outbreak, as it could quickly move to full-time online learning.

4. Online learning

The gist: The school district will provide all instruction, programming and support services remotely so as to best protect the health and safety of students and staff.

The details: Over the summer, teachers will need at least 80 additional hours of professional development to prepare adequately for an entire year of online teaching. Technological infrastructure should be scaled and secured, as necessary, and communication technologies should be used to their full advantage "to pay close attention to the development of each child and ensure that appropriate grade-level growth is happening while learning takes place at a distance." This scenario is most appropriate-or perhaps only appropriate-for middle and high school students, since younger students would need an adult at home, which can create complications for working parents.

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What Will Schools Do in the Fall? Here Are 4 Possible Scenarios - EdSurge News

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As the current school year comes to a close, looking and functioning nothing like what any of us could have imagined mere months ago, another ...

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We often use the term "new normal" to describe what happens after a cultural inflection point. It is meant to describe what happens to daily life in our cultural context after a major crisis occurs. And, "daily life" often means the changes to our work routine, personal and family access to goods and services, and other major facets of our living.

What will be the impact of the current COVID-19 crisis on education? And, what will be the new normal that will emerge as a result? We have at least seven observations that we anticipate will be in place in the next year.

1. Accelerated Change - Massive inflection points, such as the 911 terrorist attacks, 2008 global economic crisis, and current COVID-19 pandemic tend to accelerate existing changes already present in industries, rather than creating new change. For education, this means moving more rapidly and forcefully into online learning, competing globally for students and brand, and leveraging technology to collaborate and personalize learning. These are all trends that were in place in the education sector but moving at their own inertia. Now, they have heavy momentum as a result of a forced set of circumstances.

2. Ongoing Disruption - Disruption will be a constant in our new environment. We will become oddly accustomed to economic, environmental, and competitive disruptive forces that will continue to emerge. The schools and colleges that are confident, in leadership roles and have resources will respond by anticipating shifts and creating fluid solutions. Others will falter.

3. Fluidity in Strategy - Strategic planning will need to shift toward more stealth thinking and planning, placing fluidity at the core. Great schools and colleges will practice more fluid and real-time strategy and planning exercises and will respond with greater scalability in their business model. They will desire to ramp up or taper down resources according to their circumstances.

4. Ongoing Scenario Building - Great schools and colleges will become more accustomed to building scenarios, from enrollment to fundraising to investment planning. This will keep them in a more flexible rather than fixed mindset, understanding that it is our anticipation and response to circumstances that often determine our destiny.

5. Normalization of Change - In recent history, most North American schools and colleges have dealt with massive disruption every 8 to 10 years. This has included 911 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina, global economic crisis in 2008, SARS, and now COVID-19. The education industry will start to expect disruption as normal, to be expected and anticipated, and less to be feared.

6. Contraction and Consolidation - There will be fewer private schools and colleges in the future, for sure. Before COVID-19, we have been predicting that there will be 20% fewer independent schools in 20 years. Adding the current crisis into the mix will merely accelerate that process over the course of the next few years, in which we will see many falter in the next year. We also expect public educational systems to be heavily distressed in service provision and funding mechanisms as they enter into this same new reality.

7. Diversified Ecosystems of Delivery - Finally, schools and colleges will be forced to do what they have only begun to consider in the past. They will begin to diversify their delivery platforms for learning, allowing hybrid approaches to teaching and learning. This might look like a mixed-model of delivery that includes three nodes or sessions of learning each day: 1) location-based school,, 2) experiential or real-world learning, and 3) online. Students might even rotate them through concurrent sessions or nodes, which could increase enrollment capacity and even...crazy idea here...bring cost down and make the school or college more accessible.

So, what does this mean? For starters, the early bird gets the worm. Those that anticipate, strategize, and plan for these changes will have the best opportunity for long-term impact and sustainability. It also means that, while things will change immensely, it is not all new change. Most of these things were already in motion before the crisis.

A good friend and colleague of mine, writer Bob Gray, reminded me of an important Bob Dylan lyric from the song "Mississippi". I think it sums up where we are going.

You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way.

-Bob Dylan

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Seven Things That Will Happen in Education as a Result of COVID-19 - Ian Symmonds & Associates

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We often use the term "new normal" to describe what happens after a cultural inflection point. It is meant to describe what happens to daily life in our cultural context after a major crisis occurs.

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Sponsored by PowerSchool and ViewSonic

I don't need to give you much background here: As you all know, schools have been closed worldwide in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and in the same way that cities are at various stages of reopening businesses, schools are doing the same thing, or at least thinking about how it might work.

We all know that unless someone develops a vaccine soon, school just can't be run the same as it was before. There's reinfection to consider, second and third waves of cases that could cause new shutdowns, and on a more distant horizon, the stark possibility that new viruses could take us down just like this one did.

I figure right now, educators everywhere are trying to decide the best course of action, or at least wondering what their district leadership is considering. Since I have access to a lot of educators all over the place, I believe the best way I can help with that process is to ask you all what you're doing, then curate those ideas so they can reach more people. So about a week ago I tweeted out a request for ideas. I got some from there, some from my own searching, and some from the legwork that Larry Ferlazzo already did on this topic.

Reading through all the proposals was overwhelming, especially when I clicked through to look at the densely-packed documents that detailed all the different distancing and disinfecting protocols that had to be considered. I would give each one about thirty seconds, and then I just wanted to run away. The words just swam together after a while. I'm guessing you may have experienced something similar at some point. I guess I just wanted to validate that for you: Yes, it's overwhelming.

So in the spirit of contributing something of value here, rather than adding to the overwhelm, I'm going to do three things.

The first part will be practical. I'll very quickly run through seven different ideas people are considering for reopening schools. I was kind of excited about one idea in particular, because it's something a little different and it might actually work.

The second part will also be practical, but more random. In this section I'll share other thoughts and ideas I've seen floating around that connect to school reopenings but aren't necessarily tied to specific plans.

The third part will be more of a pep talk. I'm not sure how much good it will do, but I want to talk a little bit about what I would be doing right now if I were a classroom teacher bracing myself for the upcoming school year. My hope is to offer something that will help you get through this.

Alrighty then. Deep breath.

Part 1: Ideas for Reopening

Before I start on all of these options, I just have to acknowledge something: All of these ideas completely suck compared to pre-pandemic life. They are depressing and repressive and in a lot of schools, not even realistic. In a post published this past week, 3rd grade teacher Paul Murphy floated the idea that reopening schools under the proposed constraints may not be worth it at all:

"Why should we assume that placing young people in an environment of masked peers whom they aren't allowed to approach will result in an improved mental state? And if adults are going to be serious about restrictions they'll have to enforce them. It's my deep suspicion that punishments for hugging friends, admonishments for encroaching on six-foot personal bubbles, vigilant surveillance of hand-washing and line spacing, daily temperature checks that send a recurrent message that everyone else is to be feared, and possible repeated school closures when someone inevitably catches the virus will not produce an atmosphere conducive to improved mental health."

I agree with him to a large extent. But I also think it makes sense to try something, to try some kind of arrangement that gets more teachers in rooms with more students at least some part of the week, because among all the lessons we've learned from this pandemic, one has certainly been that videoconferencing just isn't the same as face-to-face.

With that said, here are some ideas that look like they might sort of kind of work. This is not an exhaustive list: I saw some ideas that would only work in schools that have very low numbers-where all students return full-time but everyone just spreads out. This doesn't seem like a realistic option for most schools. I'm also not going to get into all the handwashing, disinfecting, and testing protocols, nor will this post address transportation; we'll just focus on how schools might arrange the instructional component. Also, some schools are looking at hybrid models that combine some of these solutions or set up a plan where they toggle in between them depending on how infection stats are looking in their region at any given time.

Solution 1: Alternating Days or Half Days

Schools would run A/B schedules, where some students come on A days and others on B days. Those not at school would be doing remote learning at home. Another variation of this is doing half days, like kindergarten used to be in a lot of places, where half the student population goes to school in the morning and half goes in the afternoon.

Solution 2: Cohorts

Students are put into small groups that stay together all day, thereby mixing students with each other as little as possible. For changing classes or subject areas, the teachers are the ones who would move throughout the building.

Solution 3: Selective Return of Grade Levels, Students, or Teachers

In this arrangement, a limited number of students and teachers would return to in-person schooling, while others would continue doing school remotely.

Some schools are looking at in-person instruction for kindergarten and grade 1 (to keep students on track for early literacy and math skills), vulnerable students who need more help, students without home technology, and seniors who need to be kept on track for graduation.

This idea may also be applied to certain teachers and staff members-those over 55 or at higher risk for infection may continue to teach from home while a substitute holds down the fort in the physical classroom.

Solution 4: One Course at a Time

This idea kind of blew my mind: Students stay in the same class, with the same teacher, taking a single course for a few weeks, then rotate to another course for a few weeks. So instead of changing classes once an hour, they'd change once every two weeks or so. This was shared by science teacher Sam Long on Twitter, and I think it has real potential.

Some people pushed back on this idea because they hated the thought of students sitting in the same class for so long, but if a teacher is mixing things up, delivering instruction in an engaging way, providing good breaks, and not requiring long periods of sitting, it could work.

The only thing that could still stand in the way of this working would be social distancing requirements-you couldn't have classes at full capacity. But maybe this combined with an A/B or half day schedule could be something to try.

Solution 5: One-Room Schoolhouse

In this arrangement, students would stay in one room all day, studying multiple subjects with the same teacher. This could work in some elementary schools, where teachers are already somewhat used to teaching more than one subject and only rotate for a few subjects, but again, social distancing protocols would still have to be kept, so you couldn't operate at full capacity. To make this work instructionally, teachers might need to shift to more of a Project Based Learning approach, where students are engaged in long-term projects that incorporate learning from multiple subject areas. Kids could still interact with Ts from other rooms-maybe through the phone, videoconferencing, or just by standing far apart out in the hall?-but those teachers would need more planning time to be available for those kinds of conferences.

Instruction could also be delivered in this kind of scenario via video mini-lessons. A few years ago I interviewed teachers at the Apollo School, where students spent a block of three hours each day in a combined English, history, and art class. Each teacher offered daily mini-lessons on relevant topics, and students attended these voluntarily based on their needs and projects.

If schools were to try the "one-room schoolhouse option," it may be possible to do something similar, where a group of teachers "shares" a larger group of students, but each teacher actually stays with part of the group in their classroom and students can "attend" video-broadcast mini-lessons being given by teachers in other rooms. If all students in this arrangement were working on cross-curricular projects, this could ultimately be an improvement over the kind of traditional instruction they had before.

Solution 6: Individual Learning Plans

At first, I thought this was just not realistic: The idea of creating separate plans for each student, depending on the individual situation, learning needs, available technology, and home resources seemed an almost impossible task. But I'm starting to rethink that, because it might be accomplished with maybe five or six basic plans.

So for example, you have some students who are on plan 1, which is full-time home instruction with no technology. Those students would need to be on some sort of paper delivery system and the school might need to set up weekly face-to-face meetings between the family and an assigned teacher. Other students might be on plan 2, which is full-time home instruction with reliable technology. Plan 3 might be coming to school some days. For each subject area and grade level things might need to be further individualized, but I'm realizing that while every student has different needs, there may be groups of students whose needs are similar, so these individual plans may be something that can be batched.

Still a lot of work, obviously, but maybe not as much as I initially thought.

Solution 7: Keep Distance Learning

Amid all the discussion of how to reopen, I think keeping things the way they are-with 100% distance learning-is an option. Many schools have already done a trial run and there may be some lessons that can be applied the next time around. Obviously, getting all students connected is a must, or at the very least finding good, workable ways to stay in touch without the internet, but if that's possible, it may be the most realistic approach at least for the start of the school year. Again, like all of these other options, it's not great, but at least it's a known quantity, unlike the other arrangements that could potentially result in everyone bouncing back to distance learning anyway.

Part 2: Other Considerations

These are some other ideas that have been mentioned in conversations about reopening that are worth considering, regardless of what plan you end up with:

Remediation vs. acceleration: When planning instruction for the upcoming year, the temptation may be to focus on remediation, to go back to wherever students left off before quarantine and teach from that point forward, rather than starting the new school year where you might normally start. This seems logical, but something I read the other day caused me to rethink that-an article about the lessons learned after New Orleans schools closed post-Hurricane Katrina. According to this report, schools that focused mostly on skill recovery rather than teaching grade-level content found that students were less engaged and scored poorly on tests, whereas schools got better results when they took a "spiraling" approach, where the regular content is taught on its normal schedule, and gaps in student skill and knowledge are filled in and scaffolded as needed. I don't know much about the particulars of this approach, but the organization TNTP has put together a Learning Acceleration Guide that can help you learn more. I think it's worth a look.

Getting input from all stakeholders: Schools will have the best chance of landing on a workable solution if you involve representatives from all stakeholder groups in your school community. That means while you're still in the exploratory phase, ask teachers, support staff, paraprofessionals, students, and parents for their input, then ask again when you're narrowing your options. Do this in a way that gives them time to think through the proposed ideas and space to share their thoughts honestly. And make sure there's representation from diverse backgrounds in terms of socioeconomics, ethnicity, race, and language.

Making equity and culturally responsive teaching an integral part of the plan: Any plan for reopening or re-starting school must take into account how all students' needs will be met. A lot has been written about the ways this pandemic has shone a light on existing inequities, like this piece from Dena Simmons, and working on a reopening plan is an opportunity to address those more thoroughly than they've been addressed before. This collection offers some good resources on culturally responsive teaching in remote situations.

Looping: Elementary schools may want to consider teacher looping to build on existing relationships. This is where a teacher stays with the same students over two or more grade levels, rather than students moving to a different teacher every year.

Substitute availability: Substitute teachers are being held up as key players in some proposed scenarios, but in many districts, a large number of subs may be over age 55 and could therefore be more at risk for infection.

Childcare for teachers' kids: Many, many teachers are also parents, so if their own children can't go back to school full-time, that poses a significant problem for the teachers as well.

Part 3: Facing the Unknown

Probably the only thing that's certain right now is that no one knows for sure what the next school year is going to look like. And this may very well be putting you in a state of paralysis, waiting for someone to tell you what the plan is so you can get moving with your own preparation.

Here's what I would do in your shoes:

Prepare for a full year of 100 percent distance learning.

No matter what the specific plan looks like for next year, there's a good chance that at least some of your instruction is going to be delivered remotely. Even if your school manages to get kids into the building, social distancing will likely require students to get their materials and do much of their work on devices.

With that in mind, you're going to be better off if you have shifted a good part of your instruction into an online format. Once it's there, you can still use it in a face-to-face setting; you'll just have more opportunities to interact with students in real time.

Here are some things that can help you with the process:

Now that you have a little more time, learn how to design instruction for online environments from those who have fine-tuned the process. Simply Googling "how to create an online course" will get you lots of results, and although many of these were created by people who are creating courses for profit, you can still learn quite a bit about learner engagement from them. Two other sources to check out are this article from ASCD and this one from Inside Higher Ed.

Seek out teachers who have some pieces of the remote learning puzzle figured out and learn from them. Maybe they've gotten more engagement from students than most. Maybe they're not quite as exhausted as most of your colleagues. Maybe they've had one or two "pretty good lessons" throughout this time. See what they can teach you.

Consider curricular options that are already available online. Khan Academy is definitely worth a look, and taking advantage of this as a resource doesn't mean you won't be relationship-building and supporting students; it just means the curriculum has been taken care of and put into a format that's already optimized for online learning.

Create Contingency Plans

When organizing your lessons for the upcoming year, build in contingency plans for different scenarios. So maybe you set up all your lessons for remote learning, but mark places where, if things work out to allow face-to-face teaching or even a situation where social distancing is no longer required, you could do something different, like a lab or group activity.

Give Yourself Space to Grieve

Throughout this process, it may be helpful to occasionally stop and just let yourself grieve all the incredible experiences teachers and students won't get to have right now and for the foreseeable future. Although dwelling on this for long periods of time won't be terribly useful, it also doesn't help to pretend any of this is normal. Acknowledging the loss will allow you, your colleagues, and your students to feel validated, and this could free you up to move on and do what you can under the current constraints.

Push Back on Unreasonable Expectations

Speaking of acting like any of this is normal, I get the sense that there may be some in leadership who are plowing ahead as if instruction is going to continue at the exact same level of quality as before. Although high-quality instruction is obviously the goal, sending a message that denies current challenges can crush teachers' spirits. If you happen to be working in a district where expectations are far beyond reality, push back. Find others who you can join forces with, compose a letter or a document that offers more reasonable alternatives, and present it to your administration. It can and has worked. For more thoughts on this, read my post "We're a Family" and Other School Norms that Can Cause Teacher Burnout.

One More Thing

I want to add this last thought: When you really look at this situation we're in, what makes all of this so hard to do is that we want to be together. If we were okay staying 6 feet apart for the rest of our lives, this wouldn't be such a challenge. But good teaching is an intimate experience and most teachers are at their best when they can stand close to examine student work, give hugs and high fives, have private conversations. Good teachers know how important relationship-building is to the process-not only the teacher-student relationship, but relationships between our students. Our students want to bump shoulders, bend their heads together in whispered secrets, hug each other, mess around on the playground or at the bus stop, dance and laugh together.

We still want and desperately need this connection. This physical connection. I think it's important to stop and recognize that, because it's good news.

Over the last ten years or so, as smartphones took over and we got more and more addicted to screens, we've all collectively shaken our heads at how disconnected we had become. But this pandemic has demonstrated that we weren't actually disconnected. Yes, the devices made things different, but the whole time we were still finding ways to be close, to touch each other, to share physical space. It turns out we really do need that, and I think this is wonderful news.

In 2013, Coca-Cola produced a Super Bowl commercial I never forgot. It was a montage of footage captured by security cameras all over the world, quick clips of people hugging, kissing, doing kind things for each other, celebrating together. In every clip, people are physically close together in ways that are starting to look shocking to me within our current context.

The reason that commercial was so popular then, and why it resonates with me even more deeply now is because this is is who we are, the "normal" we long to get back to. It's that longing that's making all of this so difficult. I believe we'll get back there someday, and I think we'll be much less likely to ever take it for granted again.

Until then, we do the best we can, giving lots of grace to each other and to ourselves.

Come back for more.
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Reopening School: What it Might Look Like

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Sponsored by PowerSchool and ViewSonic I don't need to give you much background here: As you all know, schools have been closed worldwide in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and in the same way that cities are at various stages of reopening businesses, schools are doing the same thing, or at least thinking about how it might work.

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Having clarity is often difficult during moments of urgency and quickly shifting priorities-such as our school closures and transition to remote learning due to the coronavirus pandemic. But each day, district leaders are making discoveries: We weren't prepared for this or that; we hadn't accounted for every contingency; or, perhaps, we've stumbled upon a better way to manage this particular task.

That's why school districts and personnel at every level of education should be taking this time to reassess their systems, processes and vulnerabilities to optimize what will eventually be a return to some degree of normalcy. But it won't happen overnight.

We suggest that administrators take a three-phase approach: Take immediate remedial actions where you can in the short term, plan for an eventual transition back to a more recognizable learning environment, and document what new workflows should be permanently adopted as best practice for the long term.
Read: Updated: 295 free K-12 resources during coronavirus pandemic
Phase one: Triage for today

Literally overnight, educators and administrators were thrust into an entirely unfamiliar work and teaching environment. Technology needed to be learned and adopted without warning. Employees dispersed to millions of disconnected remote home offices. Nearly everything we took for granted, in terms of collaboration, communication and cooperation, was suddenly taken from us. And many instantly discovered the limitations and vulnerabilities that few had accounted for.

School districts should be encouraging administrators, educators and support staff to document where the vulnerabilities and shortcomings emerged, so they can be addressed for the long term.

Access to systems and documents has proved challenging. But work needs to get done. Meetings needs to happen. Projects need to move forward.

All of this underscores the need to quickly establish and document new workflows, new teams, new processes for planning, and new systems and technology that live in the cloud or are accessible to anyone who needs information, 24/7.

Amid all of our other urgent priorities, administrators and educators should be documenting proper workflows that account for each of the following:

Tasks: Capture explicit documentation of all required tasks to complete a given project.

Teams: Make sure all tasks are assignable to ensure completion and inject accountability.

Timelines: Create project milestones that are clearly defined and realistically attainable.

Metrics: Measure progress and success against preestablished desired outcomes.

Prompts and reminders: In times of uncertainty, teams will need (and must respond to) built-in alerts and prompts when deadlines approach or new priorities arise.

Collaboration: Multiple teams may need to collaborate on overlapping projects. Create safeguards against tasks being missed due to workflow handoffs or unclear accountability.

Read: CDC releases more extensive safety guidelines for schools
Once decided upon and documented, leverage available technology to create one centralized knowledge base and project management tool, accessible remotely. Harnessing workflows into one centralized location will ensure that nothing gets missed or skipped, and can account for new workflows that might come along as priorities shift or change.

Phase two: Transition to tomorrow

A return to regular education is coming, and we know there will be demanding deadlines and daunting decisions equal to those we are grappling with today.

If uncertainty can be mitigated, now is the time to do it, when it is most relevant and obvious. School districts should be encouraging administrators, educators and support staff to document where the vulnerabilities and shortcomings emerged, so they can be addressed for the long term-and to avoid a painful transition in the nearer term.

It may be time to plan for workflows and processes to be updated, especially considering that each individual workflow and task force may have several subworkflows, and, perhaps, even disparate teams collaborating at different times.

Here are a few transitions we can anticipate now, for which workflows and centralized knowledge bases can be established:
Read: Does your district have a continuity of operations plan?

How will we track and process the return of devices that have been assigned out, and who is assigned to each subtask?

What is the new process for building preparation and maintenance, following the sudden dispersal of maintenance personnel, including timelines and accountabilities for reopening facilities?

What updates to registration workflows may need to be made if registration for the new school year is in a compressed time frame or needs to occur remotely or digitally?

How do our teacher and student evaluations need to be addressed, given how the final weeks of this school year's curricula were delivered?

What changes need to be made to accommodate school lunch provision, both over the summer and should another similar crisis arise-delivery or centralized pickup?

Districts may have been preparing to roll out a new math series in the fall, for instance: Will workflows need to accommodate new realities and timelines?

How will summer school be administered?

Are there necessary changes to scheduling and processing of material assets, such as bus maintenance?

As budget deadlines approach, how can we build in scenarios, given the many unknowns?

Technology is better equipped to manage these tasks, workflows and scenarios at scale than humans or even static spreadsheet software, such as Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. In most cases, the data to make informed decisions and create optimized workflows already exists and is readily available.

Phase three: Adopt to adapt, and stay adept

What many discover during times of crisis is that processes and procedures adapted out of urgency or necessity can actually be adopted as best practices going forward. In fact, the quicker, most efficient way to accomplish priorities can be discovered and then defined to make our teams more effective, while reducing costs and eliminating unnecessary exposures to human error.

The first step is moving away from paper and into digital environments. Next, make sure that data and technology is universally available and accessible-anywhere, anytime by anyone who should rightly have access. Lastly, allow (or force) technology to do the heavy lifting of planning, coordinating and measuring successful projects and collaborating teams.

Your new workflows and systems should allow you to:
Linda Kraft is director of customer engagement at DA's coronavirus page offers complete coverage of the impacts on K-12. Interested in edtech? Keep up with DA's Future of Education Technology Conference®. Munetrix, a Michigan-based data analytics and management firm serving school districts and municipalities across the country.

plan and prepare for the unknown

proactively put processes in place and document workflows

account for contingencies

consider various and, perhaps even unforeseen, scenarios

trigger alternate paths, as appropriate

maintain a centralized knowledge repository that can be shared among existing team members and in perpetuity, as personnel turnover continues at pace for the foreseeable future

School district leaders may find it challenging to manage the complexity of workflows even under "normal" circumstances. Maybe "normalcy" will return soon, but in the meantime, increased urgency and shifting priorities can create or elevate margin for human error. If we can use this challenge as an opportunity to modernize and optimize workflows, we will all be better for it-both in standard operating procedures and when the next crisis presents itself.

This discipline and attention to detail in the short term will build better habits for the long run. Once we emerge from crisis mode, we should take comfort in the lessons learned and the uncertainty conquered.

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How district leaders can reassess (and optimize) operations

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Having clarity is often difficult during moments of urgency and quickly shifting priorities-such as our school closures and transition to remote learning due to the coronavirus pandemic. But each day, district leaders are making discoveries: We weren't prepared for this or that; we hadn't accounted for every contingency; or, perhaps, we've stumbled upon a better way to manage this particular task.

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As most colleges and universities in the United States begin to tackle contingency planning for this coming fall and spring given the uncertainty around COVID-19, campus leaders are looking for solutions that can quickly steady the ship.

Ed-tech companies are generously offering free trials and promises of frictionless conversion tools to help faculty members who are new to online teaching make a rapid leap to an unfamiliar modality. But these tech-based solutions often ignore the pedagogies that many of our colleges and universities center in our mission statements and admissions pitches.

As we scramble to outfit more classrooms with Zoom capabilities, teach more faculty how to upload video lectures to the learning management system, and adopt anticheating browser lockdown software for faculty to use as they deliver their traditional assessments, we are choosing stopgap measures that are unlikely to align with the kinds of language we use when we advertise our academic programs to prospective students: "our institution offers real-world experiences," "we offer hands-on approaches," "applied and project-based curriculum," "student-centered learning at its best."

As we wind down a semester of remote teaching during a time of crisis, institutions are now looking ahead to determine how we might better align the online experience we may need to offer with the kinds of engaged teaching and learning approaches and experiences that particularly our residential and face-to-face colleges and universities are known for.

What is missing from most of the remote teaching contingency planning is a framework for helping the people inside institutions understand and make decisions about pedagogy from inside the pandemic's evolving reality. Pedagogy is not an ancillary or optional part of conversations about remote teaching. Pedagogy is the category that describes how we teach. For that reason, whether we foreground it or not, pedagogy is a key part of how our learners understand and assess their experience at our institutions during this crisis.

At the Open Learning & Teaching Collaborative at Plymouth State University, we have developed the ACE framework -- adaptability, connection and equity -- to guide our decision making and professional development planning.

The idea behind ACE is that we elevate three characteristics that are clear, context sensitive, values driven and mission aligned, and we use them to plan assignment-, course- and institution-level responses to COVID-19 in the areas of our university that are connected to teaching and learning. ACE is a framework that fits Plymouth State; as a public, residentially oriented university, our pedagogical approach promises engaged and project-based experiences for students that connect them to real-world issues and problems and nurture their connections to each other and to their communities as they learn.

This pedagogical approach is popular with our comparator institutions, but other institutions that serve markedly different demographics or who take different approaches to teaching and learning may need to revise ACE or start fresh with a framework of their own. But contingency planning without a guiding framework is likely to bring most colleges and universities further from their core missions by the time this pandemic is over.

To understand ACE in action, we need to think about the practices that can be encouraged and integrated by such a framework.

The practices that populate this chart can be swapped for other examples, but the idea is that at all levels of the university (and this can be extended to other levels such as program level or system level), we can use the framework to guide our priorities as we navigate challenges to our communities. We can walk through these sets of practices to get a sense of how they work.

Adaptability: At the assignment level, instructors can create more flexible deadlines for all learners as we expect them to face trauma or uncertainty, and we can involve learners in assignment design or allow them to choose from multiple assignment options to make sure the parameters fit their schedules and circumstances. At the course level, we can create courses that allow learners to trade off more often between online and face-to-face participation as it suits their circumstances, and chunk curriculum into smaller noncumulative modules that can be deployed in different modalities depending on regional scenarios with social distancing.

And at the institutional level, we can adopt technologies and build infrastructure based on the needs of our teachers and learners and look toward university policies (such as optional pass/no pass grading or generous transfer policies) that help learners persist despite difficult circumstances.

Connection: At the assignment level, instructors can design nondisposable assignments, giving students the opportunity to contribute their work to communities where it would be helpful or appreciated, and conceive of the internet not just as a channel for submission between student and teacher, but as a portal that connects learners with the world.

At the course level, we can link appropriate content to the reality of living during a crisis, asking students to consider connections between their fields and the challenges that crisis presents to culture and livelihood, and we can use open platforms that allow the public to benefit from the course's work. At the institution level, we can invest in instructional designers to support faculty as they integrate connected learning approaches into their courses and create channels and dedicate staff to building partnerships with community partners who would like to engage with the college during a time of common community need.

Equity: At the assignment level, instructors can learn basic principles and tools from universal design for learning in order to maximize the accessibility of the approaches they take, and they can offer multiple engagement channels so that students can participate regardless of how they interface with technology, and how often. At the course level, we can transition rapidly to open educational resources to assure availability of course texts and to lower the cost of learning materials, and we can build basic needs resource information and attention into our syllabi, helping students see that we consider basic needs an academic issue.

At the institutional level, we can assume that all increases in technology use need to be accompanied by direct action to prevent widening of the digital divide. And we can partner with community agencies and other public service providers to strengthen an integrated safety net so that our students will know that their college or university understands the full breadth of challenges -- from food and housing insecurity to childcare pressure to the need for transportation -- that they face as they try to persist in college.

What we've been doing for the last eight weeks is coping. What we are starting to do now feels more like planning. In 2019, global ed-tech investments reached a staggering $18.66 billion, and as the novel coronavirus spread across the United States, ed-tech companies were right behind offering ideas, deals, gifts and promises. While many of these technologies are likely to be healthy parts of a balanced response plan, we need to be guided by a framework that is free from undue industry influence, and instead stems from what we claim is most important to our learning communities.

The ACE framework is openly licensed and easily adaptable; you can swap out the priority practices you focus on or even swap out the core values in the rubric. What matters most is that we focus teaching and learning on, well, teaching and learning, and that during a time of crisis, instead of abandoning our missions to a superficial set of patchwork technologies, we dig deeper to stay true to our commitment to our core values in higher education.
I am grateful to the CoLab's learning developer, Martha Burtis, for her partnership in designing the ACE framework.

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A consistent, mission-aligned instructional framework for the fall and beyond (opinion)

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As most colleges and universities in the United States begin to tackle contingency planning for this coming fall and spring given the uncertainty around COVID-19, campus leaders are looking for solutions that can quickly steady the ship.

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May 2020 - Mission laïque française

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nouveau message du directeur général à l'attention de la communauté scolaire

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May 2020

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Point de situation - Message important du directeur général

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Reopening schools safely: Insights, successes, and lessons learned | NEASC Virtual Global Forum

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Mlf Monde - April 2020

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May 2020

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NAIS- regularly updated

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Evolving education in the time of COVID-19

Fabricating Face Shields

Recently, 'Iolani School (HI) mobilized faculty and resources from its Sullivan Center for Innovation and Leadership to design and fabricate thousands of face shields as part of the personal protective equipment vitally needed for health care workers and others working on the front lines of the fight against COVID-19. Alumni have also returned to the school to volunteer for this cause.

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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Resources for Independent Schools

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Evolving education in the time of COVID-19 Recently, 'Iolani School (HI) mobilized faculty and resources from its Sullivan Center for Innovation and Leadership to design and fabricate thousands of face shields as part of the personal protective equipment vitally needed for health care workers and others working on the front lines of the fight against COVID-19.

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School Management Series: Practical Transitions

Get insights, tips and resources from educators and experts who are navigating the initial transition to online learning and then plans to return to campus. In this webinar series, ISS is bringing together professionals who can share their experiences and expertise to help other school leaders adapt to the changing situations.

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Webinar: Back to School Practices in the New Normal | ISS

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School Management Series: Practical Transitions Get insights, tips and resources from educators and experts who are navigating the initial transition to online learning and then plans to return to campus. In this webinar series, ISS is bringing together professionals who can share their experiences and expertise to help other school leaders adapt to the changing situations.

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CDC Guidance for Administrators of US K-12 Schools

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CDC Guidance for Administrators of US K-12 Schools

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As communities begin to think about reopening during the pandemic, Darienne Driver Hudson, a school leader who is now president and CEO of United Way for Southeastern Michigan, emphasized the need to really come together and avoid making decisions in a vacuum. "We cannot talk about business reopening unless we are talking about the welfare of these children," Hudson said. "These can't be separate conversations."

Driver, who spoke to Professor Deborah Jewell-Sherman as part of the second installment of the HGSE Leadership Series, emphasized the need to lead with courage and equity and to have the difficult conversations necessary to galvanize the community. The former superintendent of the Milwaukee Public Schools, Driver has a long career working in education as both a leader and classroom teacher before she stepped into her role at the nonprofit organization in 2018. During the hourlong discussion, Hudson encouraged leaders not to be afraid to lead, but to step into the space that their organizations were built for and bring people with you to figure out how to come out better and stronger. "How do we rebuild for the better," she said. "That's what's mission critical for all of us is, to really think about how we move forward in a different way."

Takeaways from "The Power of Collective Impact"

Remember what's possible. In times of disaster, it's easy to lose sight of what is possible, especially as leaders scramble for quick response. Hudson reminded leaders there are opportunities in these moments. Now is the time to make changes - many that have long needed to happen because our systems were not prepared. Too often organizations and districts feel limited by dollars, but Hudson reminds us to design from a place of what's possible, regardless of what barriers exist, focusing on what's going to work for all our children.

Work together with all sides of the community. There's more power in banning together, but often we fall into the trap of reaching out to only one side as we advocate our core issues to the same players over and over. Hudson stressed reaching out to both sides of the aisle and coming together as a way to out of this disaster, so that we are prepared for the next one. There's also an added benefit to working with everyone because sometimes this leads to the funding to make a new opportunity a reality.

Be courageous. Charge everyone in your district to be an advocate by creating a culture of courage. One where the name on the front is more important than the name on the back, she said. Empower your team to know that they can make a difference no matter how small.

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As communities begin to think about reopening during the pandemic, Darienne Driver Hudson, a school leader who is now president and CEO of United Way for Southeastern Michigan, emphasized the need to really come together and avoid making decisions in a vacuum.

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link specifically to child care program guidance

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On a Friday in November, Alisha Palmer, a school nurse at Jackson Park Elementary in North Carolina, noticed a few kids in the third grade were sent home with high fevers. By Monday morning, it was clear a virus had struck.

It was "some kind of third grade plague," she says in her North Carolina drawl.

Palmer could see the outbreak of fevers in her nurses' portal, which was provided by a smart thermometer company called Kinsa. Through Kinsa's FLUency program, each family is sent a thermometer for use at home. If a child is feeling sick, a parent can check their temperature, as they normally might, before they make a decision about sending their child into school. Temperatures are sent from the thermometer over to a corresponding app, where parents can add symptoms and communicate with school nurses.

A dashboard, available to both parents and school nurses like Palmer, reveals illness trends at their school. The data is anonymized so the adults only see the number of students with symptoms and fevers for each grade. A parent can also voluntarily identify that their child is sick to a school nurse. The data allows parents to make more informed decisions about whether or not their kid should stay home from school even if they don't have a fever. If they see their child has a bad cough and other students in the grade have sore throats, they might opt to keep their kid home.

The third grade plague hit during peak flu season, so the kids that stayed home on Friday went to the doctor and took a flu test. They all came back negative. It appeared to be some kind of virus with very flu-like symptoms.

That Monday, Palmer saw more fevers across the third grade in her dashboard. She grabbed all the thermometers she had in the office and went over to the third grade hallway. The students were just coming in. She armed teachers with thermometers and together they took temperatures for all 75 kids. Anyone who had a temperature of 99.7 degrees Fahrenheit or above went down to the nurse's office. There, Palmer gave the students full assessments, asking for any symptoms they were feeling. After 15 minutes, she rechecked temperatures. Those with no symptoms and no fever more than 100.4 degrees went back to class. Everyone else went home. She says she sent home 17 kids that day.

"The kids were not on medication, they were acting totally normal," she says. If it had not been for her student health portal, she wouldn't have learned that many of them were running around with fevers.

From a public health standpoint, understanding if [a disease] is coming from one grade or one classroom . . . helps you stem a potential outbreak of flu or another virus."

Ishani Ganguli
As COVID-19 continues to spread across the U.S., public health experts have been debating the merits of reopening schools. A recent study shows that children, who often only exhibit mild to no symptoms when infected with COVID-19, have lots of opportunity to transmit the virus at school. As a result, some epidemiologists think that it's too early to bring students back into schools. But experts on childhood education think that keeping kids home is also damaging, since kids could be falling behind on learning and missing out on critical social experiences. So far, suggestions for how to welcome students back into school include strict social distancing rules and allowing teachers and students with preexisting health conditions to continue working from home. But the early success of Kinsa's FLUency program suggests that health surveillance could also play a vital role.

"From a public health standpoint, understanding if [a disease] is coming from one grade or one classroom-where we know the kids are clustering together-helps you stem a potential outbreak of flu or another virus," says Ishani Ganguli, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a primary care physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital, who researches pediatric and primary care models. She also cautions that data accuracy in such a scheme would be extremely important, because false positives dictate whether someone unnecessarily misses out on school (and whether a parent unnecessarily misses out on work).

Kinsa has been tracking and modeling the spread of annual flu viruses for the last few years, and its results have been in line with that of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The company is able to predict how the flu will travel two to three weeks ahead of time. Kinsa is also tracking the trajectory of COVID-19 using its smart thermometers. This year, Kinsa will be partnering with 10% of elementary schools around the country to implement its FLUency program.

"In my experience as a doctor, I am always struck by how few people have thermometers at home," says Ganguli. "So just the notion of distributing these widely to people is awesome."

Managing public health at school

Jackson Park Elementary is 30 minutes north of Charlotte. It's a small school of 470 students, most of whom come from families that don't earn a lot of money. For the parents, caring for sick kids is often a difficult choice between losing a day of pay and ensuring their child is healthy.

"Our [families] often don't have cars, they often can't get to the doctor, maybe only one parent works," Palmer says. When she started working there in 2016, she says she would see 50 kids a day. "A lot of kids were lining up in my office and saying, 'Mom checked my temperature, she didn't know if she should take me to the doctor or not-she wanted you to check.'" That often meant kids were often coming into school sick and then infecting their classmates.

But in 2017, the school implemented Kinsa's FLUency program, which is designed specifically for Title 1 schools, or schools with a high number of low-income students.

Palmer says that after launching the program, the number of kids she saw everyday went down dramatically year over year. "I was talking with one of the other nurses and I said, 'Our director is not going to think I'm logging the children correctly, because these numbers are so drastically different.'"

Our director is not going to think I'm logging the children correctly, because these numbers are so drastically different."

Alisha Palmer
She says the program gave parents a lot more information so they could understand when their child was actually sick and make better decisions about when to take off of work. By 2018, she was only seeing 25 kids a day.

When Palmer and I spoke in March, her school had just been shut down in response to the coronavirus. She says that during that time she was able to communicate with parents through the app either about individual cases or just to send out information she was receiving from the county health department. It has proven an important platform for the school in helping parents to manage their children's health.

"We can do that on a larger scale," says Inder Singh, the CEO of Kinsa. "Imagine a county health commissioner being able to communicate out health information with their county participants." The company's thermometers are widely available in stores like Walmart and the company is testing its ability to accurately follow and predict the trajectory of COVID-19 based on temperature data. But to roll out its coordinated health platform widely in schools would require a much larger supply of its thermometers than it may currently have.

The company is already thinking about how to expand its program from several counties to a whole state. Two assistant professors at the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences and codirectors of clinical informatics at the school's Institute for Digital Health & Innovation have been in conversation with Kinsa about opportunities for using the FLUency program throughout Arkansas.

"We'd love to do a statewide student population," says Joseph Sanford, one of the codirectors. He and his codirector Kevin Sexton say there are a lot of things about FLUency that make it an attractive public health solution. Beyond being easy to find in stores and online, Kinsa's thermometer only costs $20. In addition, people are already used to taking their temperature with a thermometer when they feel sick so there's no new behavior to learn. Plus, the system isn't entirely automated-the school nurse provides a necessary human component, since they can advise on whether students should stay home and go to the doctor or come into school.

Using fever as a metric to track illness is also an advantage. Other symptoms, Sexton says, are not as clean. "Cough, for example, has a ton of other explanations," says Sexton.

He also notes that illness is the leading cause of absenteeism. Stopping sick kids from going to school reduces the total number that ultimately miss out on school days. The FLUency program has also already proved capable of helping curb flu transmission at the local level at school's like Jackson Park Elementary. Of course, in order for the Kinsa platform to work effectively, everyone at a school has to use it, which will require broad buy-in from parents. Still, Sanford thinks that people may be more inclined to participate in such a program as they consider managing COVID-19 risk when schools reopen.

"In the post-COVID era, we have an enormous opportunity to do viral season screenings," says Sanford.

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Smart thermometers could be the secret to reopening schools

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On a Friday in November, Alisha Palmer, a school nurse at Jackson Park Elementary in North Carolina, noticed a few kids in the third grade were sent home with high fevers. By Monday morning, it was clear a virus had struck. It was "some kind of third grade plague," she says in her North Carolina drawl.

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COVID-19

Your communities are likely paying attention to media reports of the rising numbers of cases of respiratory illness and deaths caused by a new coronavirus that is now present in the U.S. This guide is intended to inform school district leaders about the federally identified risks associated with this particular virus and to provide a checklist of issues school leaders should consider as you plan for any such crisis in your community. [2]

The new virus, which causes mild to severe respiratory illness, is called "SARS-CoV-2," and the disease it causes I known as "COVID-19." It is unknown at this time how many people may become ill. The U.S. government is working closely with state, local, tribal, and territorial partners, as well as public health partners, to respond to this public health threat. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is monitoring the situation and considers the immediate health risk from COVID-19 in the U.S. to be low. That risk assessment could change.

While COVID-19 currently is not spreading in U.S. communities, school systems can be proactive and plan to respond in a flexible way to a public health threat. Schools and school districts can refine their business operation response plans. School administration, including health services leadership, must be involved in the planning process, which includes partnering with local public health authorities, updating infectious disease pandemic plans, and sharing essential communication strategies. School nurses are critical members of the planning team and must participate in the planning process.
Terminology:
Epidemic: a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time.

Pandemic: a disease prevalent over a whole country or the world.

Given the likelihood that more cases of COVID-19 will be identified in the coming weeks, and more person-to-person transmission will occur, the CDC anticipates challenges arising in communities where large numbers of people need medical care at the same time. Communities could face increased absenteeism at schools, childcare centers, workplaces, and other gathering places; overloaded healthcare systems; and capacity challenges in law enforcement and transportation systems.

Planning for COVID-19 Challenges in Your School District

FIRST, school leaders should follow guidance from your state educational agency and public health department, along with their counterparts at the county and local levels. Many state agencies are posting frequent updates on COVID-19 risk levels, numbers of cases, and recommended precautions. They are in close contact with the CDC, which is coordinating health system responses at the national level. Communicate clearly and regularly with school staff about recommended precautions like handwashing. Ensure that school nurses are connected to the most recent information and are following required protocols. NASN offers guidance to school nurses and to principals and superintendents for implementing CDC recommendations.

SECOND, after ensuring your school district is in compliance with federal, state, and local health protocols, you should prepare for a possible disease outbreak in your community consistent with your existing school safety plans that take into account the specific needs of the students and families in your community. School safety plans should use an all-hazards approach that addresses many types of risks, including pandemic disease. See Fostering Safer Schools: A Legal Guide for School Board Members on School Safety.

Consider the following when making decisions:

Disease severity (i.e., number of people who are sick, hospitalization, and death rates) in the community where schools are located.

Impact of disease on vulnerable employees and students who may be at higher risk for COVID-19 adverse health complications, including early childhood students, older adults, and those with chronic medical conditions.

School systems with multiple locations spread out over a large geographical region are encouraged to take appropriate actions outlined in their infectious disease outbreak response plan based on the condition in each locality, with guidance from local and state public health authorities.

Should COVID-19 become epidemic, the CDC offers the following guidance for employers:

Encourage sick employees to stay home;

Enact sick leave policies that are flexible and consistent with public health guidance:

Allow care for family members, and

Forego healthcare provider notes for employees who are sick with respiratory illness;

Ensure routine cleaning of high-touch surfaces before students arrive and leave for the day. Disinfect commonly used surfaces with approved products and consider deep cleaning for disease outbreaks.

Resources

Your state and county departments also provide frequent updates. Please check with your local health agencies regularly.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/specific-groups/guidance-for-schools.html

General Information
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/index.html

Prevention and Treatment
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/prevention-treatment.html

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/index.html

Planning for a Possible COVID-19 Outbreak in the U.S.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/specific-groups/guidance-business-response.html

Pandemic Flu Checklist for K-12 Administrators (applicable to COVID-19)
https://www.cdc.gov/nonpharmaceutical-interventions/pdf/pan-flu-checklist-k-12-school-administrators-item2.pdf

Getting Your Workplace Ready for Pandemic Flu
https://www.cdc.gov/nonpharmaceutical-interventions/pdf/gr-pan-flu-work-set.pdf
Resources from the National Association of School Nurses:
Guidance for School Nurses
Emergency Preparedness for Pandemic for Superintendents and Principals

The World Health Organization (WHO) issues regular reports on the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its associated disease. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports/

COVID-19 Planning Checklist

The checklist that follows provides steps you can take as school leaders to plan for a possible disease outbreak.

Share and implement precautionary measures called for by your state and local health departments and communicate them to staff, students, and families. The CDC recommends the following:

Avoid close contact with people who are sick.

Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth.

Stay home when you are sick.

Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash.

Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces using a regular household cleaning spray or wipe.

Follow the CDC's recommendations for using a facemask (people with symptoms and health workers).

Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially after going to the bathroom; before eating; and after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing. If soap and water are not readily available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer with at least 60 percent alcohol. Always wash hands with soap and water if hands are visibly dirty.

Prepare for possible increased number of employee absences due to illness in employees and their family members, and for dismissals of early childhood program and K-12 schools due to high levels of absenteeism or illness.

Review your school district's current policies and procedures that may come into play, such as:

student and employee absences due to illness (should "perfect attendance" procedures be amended?),

school closures based on public health concerns,

emergency management plans, and

non-discrimination policies.

Assess levels of supplies that will be needed in case of an outbreak.

Check your insurance coverage for contingencies such as school closures and high employee absenteeism.

Emphasize the need to remain vigilant against stigma due to perceived race, national origin, or recent travel. Foster a supportive environment free from rumors or associations of a virus with a specific population.

Consider cancelling nonessential travel per travel guidance on the CDC website, including local and national field trips.

Prepare materials including symptoms lists, student absence protocols, emergency response team communications plans, communications procedures with parents in the event of school closures, and the like.

Coordinate with your state educational agency about the possibility of mass student or staff absences. Will there be flexibility on requirements for student attendance days, graduation requirements, and staffing requirements?

Determine when school closures are indicated based on a set percentage of staff and student absenteeism as recommended by local and state public health authorities.

Establish virtual education options for students if available for extended school closures.

Address how staff will be informed about expectations for student home-based academic work.

Coordinate with the state educational agency about the possibility of school closings. How will attendance days and/or virtual class time be counted?

Explore deploying visiting teachers to monitor or ensure education remains on track in case of school closings; recruit parents to assist in the delivery of educational services to their children.

Coordinate with local health and welfare agencies to ensure children receiving free and reduced-price meals continue to receive nutrition usually supplied at schools.

Address how the school district can provide information and support to families in need of childcare when schools are closed.

Determine under what conditions schools will re-open.

In collective bargaining states, explore the contract implications for mass and extended individual employee absences, and instruction during school closings.

Coordinate with the unions in advance.

Draft any needed agreements.

Plan for substitutes for all positions -- bus drivers, teachers, cafeteria staff, etc.

Address any needed sick leave exceptions or waivers.

Consider emergency sick leave pools.

Coordinate with health insurance carriers regarding any anticipated challenges with the widespread use of health insurance benefits.

If the congregation of students prevents group childcare, explore with local agencies and community groups the kinds of services for childcare available for in-home care and serve as a resource for parents, particularly in high-poverty areas.

Collaborate with local chambers of commerce to help businesses understand the potential impact of reduced or limited group childcare on families during the crisis and encourage planning accordingly.

Identify state and federal emergency relief, grants, and funding flexibility available to address unexpected needs.

Coordinate with local health authorities about expectations to utilize school facilities for emergency services.

Obtain any needed equipment and supplies.

Clear communication for staff and families is critical for potential quarantine expectations related to school closures. Work with public health officials for effective communication strategies.

Seek federal and state grants and other assistance to help recovery efforts.

After implementing your plan to re-open schools:

Address any requirement to make up missed school days;

Provide counseling to students as appropriate and involve community partners; and

Update the emergency plan as needed.

Appendix to Fostering Safer Schools: A Legal Guide for School Board Members on School Safety (National School Boards Association, 2018). [2] This guide is not legal advice. Please consult with your state school boards association and your school attorney member of the NSBA Council of School Attorneys for legal guidance particular to your state and district. This guide will be updated as necessary to reflect current conditions and changes in federal guidance.
Click to View and download COVID-19 Preparing For Widespread Illness in Your School Community, A Legal Guide for School Leaders

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COVID-19: Preparing For Widespread Illness in Your School Community

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Your communities are likely paying attention to media reports of the rising numbers of cases of respiratory illness and deaths caused by a new coronavirus that is now present in the U.S.

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Health of Students attending school

Students must show the green Suzhou Health Code to enter the school campus and the student survey completed.

If you child is unwell for any reason they MUST NOT come to school. Please keep them at home for observation or see a doctor.

Please monitor your child's health regularly. If your child has a temperature of over 37.3°C they cannot go to school.

Face Masks

Students must wear a face mask to and from school and throughout the school day

Two types of face masks can be used:

1. Disposable medical masks, which should be replaced every 4 hours or immediately after being damaged, polluted or wet

2. N95 medical protective masks can be used for 24 to 48 hours without damage or pollution

Families are responsible for providing their child(ren) with masks for use at school

Students must bring 2 spare masks with them each day

Cotton masks or sponge masks are not allowed

Getting to and entering the school campus

Students traveling by school bus:

Students traveling by school bus will have their temperature taken before boarding the bus. Any student with a temperature over 37.3°C will not be allowed to take the bus to school.

Students from Pre-Nursery to Grade 5 must have a parent with them at the bus stop every morning just in case the student is not allowed to board the bus and needs to go home.

Students in Grade 6 to 12 will be asked to inform their parents immediately if they are not allowed to take the school bus and make their way home.

Students walking to school, travelling by car, bike or public transport

All students must arrive at Gate 1, the school's main gate, to enter the school and have their temperature taken.

Any student with a temperature over 37.3°C will not be allowed to enter the school.

Students from Pre-Nursery to Grade 5 should have a parent with them just in case the student is not allowed to enter school and need to go home.

Any student not allowed to enter the school will be moved to a waiting area for parents to come to school and take their child home.

Dropping-Off and Picking-Up students from Gate 1

Parents are NOT ALLOWED to enter the school campus and must drop-off their child and pick them up at Gate 1.

Teachers and Teacher Assistants will be at Gate 1 to help take younger students to class.

Parents are kindly asked to move away from Gate 1 once they have dropped-off or picked-up their child(ren) and avoid overcrowding.

Hygiene Education
All classes will receive a demonstration on how to wash their hands and how to wear a face mask.

Posters are displayed around the school with hand washing and mask wearing instructions.

The following hand washing method will be taught:

Wash your hands with running water, use soap or hand sanitizer, dry hands with a disposable paper tissue or clean towel. There are seven steps to washing hands correctly:

Step 1: Rub two palms together

Step 2: Rub hands and palms together, left and right cross scrubbing

Step 3: Rub hands and fingers together

Step 4: Hold fingers together, bend joints of fingers, and rub hands together

Step 5: Hold thumbs, rotate and rub hands

Step 6: Rotate and rub the fingertips of one hand in the other palm and switch for the other hand

Step 7: Hold the other wrist in one hand and rotate it for rubbing and switch for the other hand.

Hand washing is required in the following situations: after coughing or sneezing; before and after eating; before and after drinking, after break; after using the toilet; when hands are dirty; after sports; after physical contact with others; after coming back in from outside the classroom; before and after delivering items.

The school will also provide hand sanitizer in all classrooms and outside the canteen.

Lunch and Break Time in the School Canteen

Students will have a specific lunch time to prevent overcrowding in the canteen.

Students will all sit at tables facing one direction.

Students will not be allowed to sit opposite each other.

Classrooms

In Grades 1 to 12, students will sit at desks / tables facing in one direction.

In Early Years, classrooms will be organised to maximise social distancing.

Ventilation and Air Conditioning

No heating or cooling systems will be used in the school until further notice.

Classrooms will be ventilated more 3 or more times a day for 20-30 minutes.

Students should come dressed for school with enough warm clothing, as classrooms may still be cold during April.

Disinfection of common areas of the school campus

The main common areas of the school including the school corridor, staircase handrails, conference rooms, lifts, toilets and other public parts will be disinfected every day.

The bathrooms will be disinfected many times each day, including when students are at school.

Disinfection of classrooms, including specialist classrooms

A disinfection schedule will be in place for all classrooms and specialist classrooms.

What happens if a student is unwell during the day?

Our nurse station remains open at all times during the school day and will treat common ailments in accordance with normal school procedure.

If a student is suspected of having a fever, they will be moved to a medical isolation room and the student's parents will be informed immediately and asked to come to school to take the student home for further observation, to see a doctor, or to attend a fever clinic.

Only if it is deemed a medical emergency will a student be taken to a fever clinic. Parents will be informed immediately.

If a student has a fever and must go home, a medical certificate must be provided to the school nurse in order for a student to return to school.

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School Reopening Instructions - Suzhou Singapore International School

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Health of Students attending school Students must show the green Suzhou Health Code to enter the school campus and the student survey completed. If you child is unwell for any reason they MUST NOT come to school. Please keep them at home for observation or see a doctor.

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Denmark’s return to school gives glimpse of what classrooms will look like post-lockdown | CNN

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Younger children in Denmark are returning to school this week as the country starts gradually to reopen, with the number of coronavirus cases dropping.

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Australia

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Children in Victorian government schools have been undertaking remote and flexible learning and care since the start of Term 2.

The Victorian government has announced that students, teachers and support staff can return to face-to-face teaching. This follows advice from the Victorian Chief Health Officer.

The return to school will take place in two stages. This will give the Victorian Chief Health Officer and Government time to monitor and evaluate the effects that the staged return to school has on the increased movement of people and transmission within the community.

Schools will begin a staged return from remote and flexible learning from Tuesday 26 May 2020. All students will attend school as normal from Tuesday 9 June 2020.

To support all school staff to prepare for the transition, Monday 25 May will be a pupil-free day. This is important to enable the planning necessary to ensure the successful transition back to school can be completed.

Find more information about the staged return to face-to-face teaching.

For more information about learning from home, visit:

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Children in Victorian government schools have been undertaking remote and flexible learning and care since the start of Term 2. The Victorian government has announced that students, teachers and support staff can return to face-to-face teaching. This follows advice from the Victorian Chief Health Officer. The return to school will take place in two stages.

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Coronavirus pandemic-forced school closures from kindergarten to college - will transform how teachers teach and students learn.

The big picture: Our long-held views of schools and the roles of teachers, students and parents will never be the same. That could be a good thing if we seize this opportunity to make changes that actually result in better outcomes for students and better resources for teachers.

Most parents in a new survey by the National Parents Union said schools should use this time as an opportunity to make changes to education.

61% said schools should focus on rethinking how to educate students and should come up with new teaching methods as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.

Only 32% of parents want schools to revert to the way things were before the pandemic began.

Here are some of the ways experts say education will change:

1. Redefining assessment: Standardized tests have broadly been canceled this year due to school closures. While there will be a need to assess where students are academically when classes resume next year, there will likely be more of a focus on mastery-based assessments already offered by many online learning platforms, like Khan Academy.

"If we can focus mastery much more on actual learning than what kids score on some tests, it allows us to start trusting our teachers more in a way we want to and need to," says Todd Rose of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and co-founder of Populace, a think tank.

Many colleges have temporarily waived the SAT/ACT requirement due to the crisis. This could lead to a broader decoupling of much-maligned standardized tests from college acceptance.

2. New power in the hands of students and parents: Many are considering delaying or forgoing college given the risk of a second wave of this pandemic and the uncertainty of the job market on the other side of a degree.

That's an opportunity to address concerns about the cost of higher education in the U.S. and how it serves students - and society. Institutions will be under pressure to reduce tuition and justify their value proposition.

"Parents and students have more power now than they've ever had. Let's have the conversation about what we want out of higher education," Rose says.

At the K-12 level, school districts are asking for parents' input on reopening plans, giving parents more say than in typical circumstances.

3. More emphasis on personalized learning: Students will eventually return to classrooms and campuses, but virtual education will stay part of the mix.

Blended learning options where students are split up for classroom learning for a few days a week and online for the remainder will likely become the norm, says Andy Rotherham, co-founder of nonprofit Bellwether Education.

He also predicts a transition to competency courses where students can move ahead at their own pace instead of logging into classes for the entire school day.

"The best teachers have always personalized," says Elisa Villanueva-Beard, CEO of Teach For America. Now with virtual learning, "we have an opportunity to recognize this asset and put it to use in a way that's data driven."

4. Renewed focus on inequities: Larger reliance on remote learning has magnified existing socioeconomic disparities when it comes to access to broadband and devices, plus the availability of a parent to steer at-home learning.

More than 21 million Americans do not have high-speed internet, and many children do not have access to devices at home. Not all parents have the tech skills or the time to adequately help their children find and navigate the ed-tech platforms.

School districts are working now to plan strategies for the fall - not only what drastic changes will need to be made in the classroom setting to maintain social distancing, but how to prepare more robust online programs, especially given the possibility of being in this position again.

"Do children have hot spots? Do they have access to devices?" Villanueva-Beard says. "That's now like asking if kids have backpacks and paper and pencils. It's essential."

Reality check: Despite the opportunities to make changes, there will be a strong pull toward the status quo because people are longing for a return to pre-pandemic life, especially for parents of K-12 students.

"People are craving normalcy - the last thing they want is disruption even if that would be good for them," Rose says.

The bottom line: One of the most impactful changes brought on by the pandemic is a greater appreciation for teachers' skill, patience and creativity. There will also be a greater emphasis on giving them the tools and training they need to adjust to the new reality of their jobs.

"Ultimately you can have all the tech in the world, but really great learning is a human endeavor," Rose adds. "It's about the teacher and student relationship."

Go deeper:

1. Coronavirus has exposed the cracks in digital teaching strategies

2. Schools struggle to afford meals for low-income children during pandemic

3. For employees to return to work, childcare centers must reopen too

4. An expert Q&A on managing children's behavior during the coronavirus pandemic

5. College students are considering a coronavirus gap year instead of online classes

6. Photos: Art students get creative with materials found at home during coronavirus pandemic

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The coronavirus pandemic is transforming how teachers teach

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Coronavirus pandemic-forced school closures from kindergarten to college - will transform how teachers teach and students learn. The big picture: Our long-held views of schools and the roles of teachers, students and parents will never be the same.

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Welcome to Frankfurt International School and thank you for considering us for your child's learning, growing and becoming.

At FIS our mission informs our actions and shapes our expectations. While academic excellence resides at the center of school life, the arts, sciences, humanities, language learning, life skills and athletics are within a tight orbit.

Our teaching and learning practices are rooted in the International Baccalaureate Programme, helping students make connections across academic disciplines and challenging them to achieve their highest potential as individuals - and as caring, honorable, ethical and adaptable global citizens. This world of ours requires intellectual dexterity, independent thinking, unflagging curiosity, social agility, courage, social responsibility and uncompromising character, and our community is deeply committed to ensuring our young people are so prepared.

With more than 50 years of service to the Frankfurt/Rhein-Main area our reputation is founded on the motivation of our students, the skill of our faculty and unprecedented participation by our parent community. The reflections of our alumni and their parents speak to the quality of those relationships.

Our doors are open to you with the assurance we will be at your family's side providing excellence in teaching and learning. Now we need you to join us to make this an even more remarkable place.

Kind Regards,

Dr. Paul M. Fochtman
Head of School

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Welcome to Frankfurt International School and thank you for considering us for your child's learning, growing and becoming. At FIS our mission informs our actions and shapes our expectations. While academic excellence resides at the center of school life, the arts, sciences, humanities, language learning, life skills and athletics are within a tight orbit.

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When schools reopen this fall - if they reopen this fall - students and teachers will not be returning to the classroom learning environments they left behind in March, when school districts across the country shuttered for more than 55 million children.

Some of the most obvious differences will be the increased sanitization of classrooms and buses, teachers and children wearing masks and other personal protective gear, frequent temperature checks and hand-washing and new rules that allow for as much social distancing as possible.

That might mean, for example, students being served lunch at their desks instead of in a cafeteria, or new schedules that keep students in a single classroom sitting at desks spaced six feet apart while teachers rotate from classroom to classroom.

Photos: America at Standstill

"The only thing that's certain right now is that we're not certain," says Wayne Lewis, former education commissioner in Kentucky who is now dean of the College of Education at Belmont University at Nashville. "It's important to say that because as educators and educational leaders we need to wrap our heads around the reality that we don't necessarily know what it's going to look like."

Some school districts are considering a staggered start, perhaps beginning with children who have tested negative for the virus. Others are considering various rotating schedules in which students come into school on certain days and log in remotely on others. Many are considering lengthening the school day and year to make up for lost learning time.

"Either we're going to start the school year as we were in January of this year, or we are going to start the school year using remote learning or some combination of in between," Lewis says. "Maybe we start with remote learning and then transition kids into physical buildings. It's going to be some combination of those, and I think we have to do some planning for all of them."

A handful of schools in Wyoming and Montana - two of the three states where governors haven't ordered schools closed for the remainder of the academic year - have opened for students with disabilities who require in-person teaching as well as seniors at risk of not graduating.

One universally accepted change is a continued reliance on virtual learning and the need to ramp up the use of education technology.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, for example, announced Tuesday that state education officials will partner with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to "revolutionize" and "reimagine" K-12 education for when schools reopen, focusing on how technology can be leveraged to make learning more effective, especially for English learners and students with disabilities - two groups of students who educators have had the hardest time serving with the sudden transition to distance learning.

"What we are doing this spring is not virtual learning at its best," Candice McQueen, the former state education chief of Tenneseee who is now the CEO for the National Institute for Excellence In Teaching, says. "If we can't fix that in the next few months we will struggle again going into the fall because there will be some continuation of virtual learning heading into the next school year."

In one extreme example, a school board in a suburb just outside Detroit voted this week to replace teachers at a small, alternative school with an education software program and make learning entirely virtual and mostly from home.

The ability to be nimble when it comes to moving from in-person teaching to digital teaching is imperative, McQueen and many others have said, anticipating the likelihood that schools will be forced to close again in some communities that see a second wave of infections before a vaccine is readily available. Those concerns only grow as new evidence mounts that children transmit the virus even if they don't show symptoms and therefore opening schools, especially in places in the U.S. where community spread hasn't been eradicated, could cause a spike in cases.

For teachers who are immunocompromised - perhaps have asthma, diabetes or heart disease that puts them at a higher risk of having a severe infection - or who live with family members who are high-risk, the decision to physically return to the classroom is complicated. And with nearly one-third of the teaching workforce 50 or older, deciding whether or not they can safely return to the classroom could radically change how learning happens. Students in classrooms could end up with a teacher on a video screen rather than in person.

Guidance issued last week by the American Federation of Teachers, the 1.7-million member teachers union, recommends educators with high-risk for severe infections remain at home and teach remotely via video to students who are physically in the classroom and overseen by staff.

"There's a whole set of population of school personnel that because of their age or underlying health it may be too risky for them to come back," says John Bailey, visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who held a number of policy-related positions within the George W. Bush administration. "We have to think about how to use those teachers in new ways and backfill them."

Bailey, along with Lewis, McQueen and 18 other national education leaders representing a range of philosophies and politics, issued a consensus guidance this week through the American Enterprise Institute about how and when schools should reopen.

Among many other things, the recommendations include a series of considerations for state and local education officials about things like school operations, how to best support children who've experienced trauma during the months-long school closures, how to be flexible for educators who are at high-risk for severe infections and how to supercharge education technology platforms.

Editorial Cartoons on Education

One of the biggest issues civil rights and education equity groups are bracing for are the disparate ways reopenings occur in schools that serve lots of poor children versus those that serve majority middle- and upper-class children.

Will schools in wealthier communities have more access to personal protective equipment, soap, hand sanitizer and cleaning supplies? Will they be able to more effectively social distance because they have more space? Will they be better positioned to afford things like staggered starts or rotating schedules that are likely to require more staff and therefore more resources?

"We are going to have to prioritize the inequities that this crisis has laid bare in education and all aspects of American life," says Joanne Weiss, an independent education policy consultant who served as chief of staff for former education secretary Arne Duncan during the Obama administration. "Thinking through the priorities and making sure we're putting our money where the needs are must be top of mind."

Complicating that landscape further, what schools do and don't do is intrinsically tied to their budgets, which are slated to take a major hit next school year as state and local revenues account for 90% of them. Superintendents of urban districts, for example, are bracing for 15% to 25% budget cuts, which they estimate will translate to more than 275,000 fewer teachers in big city schools.

Tight budgets combined with continued social distancing could mean extracurricular activities like art, music and physical education are no longer part of the school day, which instead is dedicated solely to the most important academic subjects students need to know.

As governors and state and local education officials begin seriously thinking about how to reopen schools safely, one thing is becoming more and more clear: The changes thrust onto schools this spring aren't temporary; they're major structural changes that are here to stay.

"A vaccine is probably 18 months away, probably even longer," Bailey says. "That's not just this upcoming academic year, but it gets us a little into the following academic year. This is not about how to make accommodations for this coming school year but to make sure they are in place for the following years as well."

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How School Will Change When Kids Return to Classrooms

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When schools reopen this fall - if they reopen this fall - students and teachers will not be returning to the classroom learning environments they left behind in March, when school districts across the country shuttered for more than 55 million children.

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The vast majority of schools in the United States have closed their doors for the remainder of the academic year, an " unprecedented disruption " to K-12 education that has left parents and kids wondering when things will get back to normal ― and questioning what "normal" will mean amid a pandemic.

HuffPost Parents spoke to five experts in health and education, who ― while repeatedly emphasizing that the situation is changing by the day ― offered their predictions about what school might look like for kids whenever it starts again.

It probably won't follow the typical schedule.

No one knows whether school will start again in September. New York City's education chancellor has said there's a 50/50 chance that his city's schools will reopen in the fall.

Other parts of the country are considering earlier start times. In Missouri, policymakers are mulling a summer reopening to help mitigate learning loss and to get ahead of potential disruptions later in the year. Health officials have spoken of the possibility of a spike in COVID-19 cases this fall.

So a typical academic year schedule seems unlikely. And certainly everything could change as doctors learn more about the health risks posed to children by a rare inflammatory syndrome possibly linked to the coronavirus.

"Even after schools open, if we have a second wave of this virus, they may have to close again."

"Even after schools open, if we have a second wave of this virus, they may have to close again," said Dr. Sally Goza, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which recently issued guidelines about reopening schools that it will be regularly updating.

"There may be rolling closures, where they're open, then they're closed, then they're open again," she said.

Parents should be honest with their kids about that possibility, the experts advise, so children are not counting on things moving forward in the usual way.

"Share the information you know for sure in a developmentally appropriate way. If your child asks you something you don't know, be honest and avoid vague jargon," said Rachel Busman, a psychologist and senior director of the Child Mind Institute's Anxiety Disorders Center. "It's OK to say, 'That's a great question. We don't have all the information yet. I'll be sure to tell you more as I find out.'"

Get ready for shortened or staggered days.

In order to keep children, teachers and other school staff safe, public health officials say it will be critical to not crowd large numbers of kids together. One way schools might avoid that is by adjusting the daily schedule so that kids attend on alternating days or in shorter shifts each day.

"I think we could see teachers who are now doing three shifts [of students] a day, with two or two-and-a-quarter hours per shift," said Brian Perkins, an associate professor of practice in education leadership and director of the Summer Principals Academy at Columbia University's Teachers College.

So instead of having 30 kids in class for a full day, students might come in ten at a time for a few hours. That way, Perkins said, schools could limit class size using the teachers and classrooms they already have available. That kind of schedule would place an incredible burden on parents, he acknowledged, but it may be the best option available.

Even in schools with smaller classes, experts say that parents can assume the traditional drop-off routine is a thing of the past.

"We'll ask parents and faculty to be wearing masks and we'll do temperature checks at the door," said Lee Scott, chairwoman of the educational advisory board at The Goddard School, a private early education provider. The school expects to stagger when parents can drop their children off and to make sure the parents are in and out fast.

Teachers will likely wear masks. Kids might too.

In the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's proposed guidelines for reopening schools, which were obtained by The Associated Press, the agency called for cloth masks for all teachers. It's unclear whether those guidelines will be taken up by state and local governments, but it seems likely that many teachers will be wearing masks. (The AAP's guidance for reopening schools says that masks may be one strategy used to limit the spread of COVID-19, but doesn't provide much detail beyond that.)

It's possible that in some places, kids will be expected to wear masks as well, though that probably depends a lot on their age.

"I highly doubt that schools are going to require children under 5 to wear masks," said Scott.

"If children want to wear masks, that's of course perfectly fine, but making them wear masks is a different protocol," she added.

Subject-wise, school could be cut down to the absolute basics.

If school days are shorter or kids attend only a few days a week, school districts are going to have to make difficult decisions about what they have time for.

"I think unfortunately it's going to have to be a discussion of 'What is an acceptable amount of education?'" said Perkins. "Right now, we build in a lot of non-cognate areas, like physical education, the arts. Those are so important. But I think it's going to be a question of 'What is absolutely required?'"

He anticipates that schools will prioritize language arts and math, followed by science and history. Unfortunately, a lot of other subjects simply won't fit on the schedule.

It is also likely that after-school care, arts programs and athletics will be shelved - which, again, will hugely complicate life for many working parents.

"Sporting events, practices and conditioning sessions will be limited in many locations," the AAP says in its guidelines.

Digital learning is not going away.

Because school days could be abbreviated, and because the next school year could stop and start in waves, experts say that parents and kids should be prepared for the likelihood that remote learning will not end with the current academic year. Especially if children are not physically in class for full days, schools will need to rely on digital learning to fill in some gaps.

"Situations like this shine a light on inequalities that already existed in our society and that are reflected in the education system."

That means the challenge of ensuring that children have access to reliable internet service and devices will not go away either. Schools and educators will continue to grapple with the many ways in which COVID-19 has heightened existing inequities.

"Situations like this shine a light on inequalities that already existed in our society and that are reflected in the education system," said Nermeen Dashoush, an early childhood education professor at Boston University and chief curriculum officer at MarcoPolo Learning.

Educators will likely spend a lot of time measuring learning loss.

Whenever school reopens - and however changed, or not, it is - teachers will need to spend more time than usual getting a sense of where their students are and helping many of them catch up.

"I think the big question is going to be: How are we going to push kids forward in a way that helps them catch up after missing kindergarten or a third of first grade year?" said Perkins.

Teachers will need to gauge where children are and find ways to overcome what could, in many cases, be a pretty profound learning loss. A huge challenge will simply be carving out the time to measure students' progress.

Kids will still be dealing with some really complex emotions.

Children's worlds have been upended by the pandemic, and both parents and schools should understand that the transition back will not be a simple one. Several of the experts noted that children may experience unprecedented separation anxiety after spending months at home. Kids may be confused about why school is so different now. They might have lost loved ones to the coronavirus. They might be afraid of catching it themselves.

Parents can help. "When kids are worried, we want to ask why and get more information instead of assuming we know," Busman said. "For example, if a child says that they are scared to go back to school, say, 'I really want to understand that more. What are you most worried about?'"

Schools are going to have to check in on kids' emotional wellbeing, too, and to walk the sometimes fine line between promoting safety and being overly strict. It will be a real-time experiment.

"There's a lot of anxiety. It's not possible to put a 4-year-old child in school and tell him to stay 6 feet away from another child or don't touch high-contact surfaces. It's not going to happen," said Dashoush. "We can't put them in a situation where we're setting them up for failure and probably amplifying anxiety they're already feeling."

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coronavirus covid-19 education children schools

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Experts Predict What School Could Look Like When It Reopens

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The vast majority of schools in the United States have closed their doors for the remainder of the academic year, an " unprecedented disruption " to K-12 education that has left parents and kids wondering when things will get back to normal ― and questioning what "normal" will mean amid a pandemic.

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anti-microbial furniture

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A safe and clean environment supports positive experiences while encouraging good hygiene practices. The Isku+ solution increases cleanliness creating a more hygienic environment with the combination of good hand hygiene practice, regular cleaning and the use of antimicrobial surfaces.

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Advances in material science play a significant role especially in indoor hygiene management. Each day we are all in contact with contaminated surfaces. The cleaner the environment, the lower is a risk of contamination and an infection. Together with good hand hygiene and regular cleaning, utilizing antimicrobial Isku+ furniture solutions increases cleanliness creating a more hygienic environment.

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Will children ever be able to ride in a school bus after the coronavirus pandemic?

Slowly but surely, countries are starting to relax the harsh lockdown measures that were taken to fight the coronavirus outbreak. Some school systems have already re-opened, and others will follow soon.

Returning to schools also means that new regulations need to be adopted. To keep students and staff safe from COVID-19 infections, social distancing must be kept, and physical barriers installed.

This presents a huge challenge for the extensive school bus networks, that bring millions of students worldwide to and from their schools. Whether operated by local authorities or by schools themselves, school busses and their networks will have to be adjusted within a short time.

Much is at stake: how to keep social distance onboard, including physical protection for the driver? how to disinfect the vehicles after each service? and how to optimise the movement of all students under the new regulations, without creating huge costs for the operators?

Social distancing in school busses

Because of the short time given to adopt, school bus operators should first define the resources available and then mobilize them. These resources are both materialistic (the number of busses) and

human: how many drivers and attendants are necessary to comply with the new regulations.

Let's keep in mind that the available fleet of vehicles cannot be significantly expanded, especially at such a short notice. Borrowing vehicles from public transport authorities is unlikely these days, as they too will have to implement social distancing regulations.

A successful re-organization of the school bus system should also involve intensive communication with the local authorities, to make sure it meets regulations. This can be achieved by involving them as early as possible in the process, before any implementation.

Adopting the regulations "as is" may not be enough. If the same number of school busses can transport just a limited number of students in each ride, there will be more journeys every day, stretched over more hours. This, in turn, may result in students arriving in the early rides, congregating in front of the school and not keeping social distance. It may also lead to inequality between students arriving on time to school in the early rides, and those who will miss classes because of a later pick-up.

Adjusting school bus systems

In this exceptional and complex adjustment process, sophisticated route planning is essential. This is a time-consuming process for planners, even in non-corona times: it includes testing of multiple traffic scenarios in order to make informed and reliable decisions.

Luckily, the process can be sped up with the use of advanced route optimization software. These software save much time during the study and implementation stages.

To speed up the adjustment of school bus systems, these software will simultaneously consider and integrate various factors, such as:

the type of vehicles

characteristics of the students: age, special mobility needs, need for adult companions

time spent onboard the busses and detour factors

Finally, the interaction between the students should be considered. Children from different age groups do not always mix well in the same confined space.

Good route optimization software

A route optimisation software should be reliable and have a high level of setting. Also, input and output must be accessible, flexible and understandable.

Besides, the software should rely on professional cartographic data to guarantee its reliability; consider the specific constraints of the busses and special needs of the students; have a high-precision address geocoding function for stopover or door-to-door service; and offer sector-specific methods of optimization.

PTV Route Optimiser software, which includes the above requirements, has been for years an effective tool for many transport operators. Its added value lays in the evaluation of key performances in different levels: timing and setting-up of routes, study time for real-time operations, driving time, costs of fuel consumption and vehicle maintenance, and others.

PTV Group is offering free test periods of Route Optimiser, which can be used by transport operators working to adjust their systems to new post-corona regulations.

Prepare your school bus network for post-corona era

PTV Route Optimiser helps adjust the school bus network to keep students safe and costs down

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After coronavirus: can the school bus be safe? | PTV Blog

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Will children ever be able to ride in a school bus after the coronavirus pandemic? Slowly but surely, countries are starting to relax the harsh lockdown measures that were taken to fight the coronavirus outbreak. Some school systems have already re-opened, and others will follow soon.

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NPR - early May

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subscribe to Coronavirus Daily podcast

May 7 is the date that Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, declared it was safe to open up schools. The state has had fewer than 500 reported cases of the coronavirus as of this week.

But according to the state's Office of Public Instruction, just a few school districts in small towns have taken the governor up on the offer. That gap - between a state executive proclaiming schools OK to open and the reality of tiny groups of students gathering in just a few schools - shows the logistical challenges educators and state officials around the country face in any decision to reopen.

Willow Creek School in Three Forks, Mont., is opening its doors and expects a few dozen of its 56 students to show up. Troy, a northwestern Montana town, is holding limited and voluntary "study hall" visits, focusing on special education students, as well as some outdoor activities. The town of Glasgow says it will open its schools on a limited basis to students without devices.

Libby, a town of fewer than 3,000 people, is allowing students to come back to the single middle/high school to meet face to face with teachers, for what amounts to targeted tutoring sessions. They can sign up for an appointment to get help in a subject they're struggling with.

Craig Barringer, the superintendent of Libby's schools, said that educators made this decision based on surveying parents. When it came to elementary school students, "The parents felt they were more able to handle them and/or more able to help them."

Not so at more advanced academic levels. "When you get into even seventh-grade math, parents can't give the assistance that they need if they really get stuck."

There's a long list of precautions being taken, Barringer says.

Students will be greeted at the door. They'll be encouraged to wear masks. They've put up hand-sanitizing stations. "We have breaks in between scheduled appointments so we can clean and air out the smell of cleaner."

Public schools play a range of roles in society beyond education. As child care for millions of working parents, they are a cornerstone of any attempt to reopen the economy. They are hubs for community relationships and distribution points for essential social services.

But, before any of that, they must be safe places for children. With those various functions in mind, education leaders are putting out plans that forecast some very big changes to what public school might look like in the coming months and even years.

The complications are leading to a patchwork effect and a disconnect between levels of government in many places.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, talked about trying to open up for summer school as soon as July. But school leaders in Palo Alto and Sacramento countered that it would be more likely that they'd have to push the start of the school year later by a few weeks because of all the planning necessary to open up safely.

In Georgia, even as Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, has been out ahead of the rest of the country on opening up some businesses, there are a few districts that chose to end the school year early, putting an end to their efforts with remote learning.

And Washington, D.C., public schools have also decided to end the school year early, pledging to tack those weeks back on by starting earlier in August. In Washington state and in Chicago, leaders have acknowledged that some form of remote learning might continue off and on through the 2020-2021 school year or even beyond.

In the past few days, the American Federation of Teachers, the nation's second-largest teachers union, put out a detailed blueprint for reopening. And so did the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank, which asked retired state superintendents, city chancellors and other school leaders to weigh in.

These two plans have a lot in common as far as basic medical recommendations: the need for rapid and repeated coronavirus testing of students and staff, contact tracing, stepped-up hygiene and cleaning, and reducing class sizes to allow for social distancing.

Here are four tough problems that are on experts' minds:
Running remote and in-person learning in parallel
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, this week announced that the state will be working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (which is a supporter of NPR) to "reimagine schools." The foundation has backed a range of technological innovations in education, from AI to "personalized learning," sometimes generating controversy.

Regardless of the particular path any district takes, the pandemic is likely to be a turning point as far as the role of technology in public, K-12 education.

The AFT and AEI blueprints both say remote learning should continue while schools are doing staggered schedules, so that all the kids can keep up. Both plans also foresee further waves of the virus leading to future school shutdowns, another reason to keep remote learning plans in place just as school districts have done for years in the case of snow days or tornadoes.

The plans envision schools running in parallel, both online and in-person. That requires huge investments going forward in materials, equipment and training for teachers, and equipment and connectivity for families.
Serving the neediest and traumatized kids
Beyond the risk of spreading the virus, there's a laundry list of other concerns to consider, both the AFT and AEI plans say. Learning loss. Missed socialization. A probable increase in child abuse and domestic violence while students have been home. Lost family members. Many, many families out of work.

To meet all of these needs, the American Federation of Teachers plan recommends an idea that's been around for a while: " community schools." Public schools across the country right now are being used for food distribution. Clearly, that's become their essential, non-duplicated function in an emergency. Could more schools, then, add housing, mental health or health care services on top of that?

A related idea is to bring the kids with likely higher needs back to campus early, or keep them there longer, such as for summer school. As Troy, Mont., and schools in other countries like Israel have done, should educators focus on bringing back special education services first?

"I think it mitigates inequalities if you start the most vulnerable kids first," says Randi Weingarten, the head of the AFT.
Privacy
The AEI plan points out that there are privacy problems both with online learning and with the kind of public health surveillance required to control a pandemic in person.

"What data is it OK to share?" asks Rick Hess at AEI, who co-authored the report. "If we're talking about tracking and tracing, we're getting very invasive."

And then, with remote learning, Hess adds, "a lot of school districts are relying upon products that were never designed to be used with tens of millions of children at home." He points to incidents of " Zoombombing," online harassment and pranks that led many large school districts to abandon the videoconferencing service.
Transportation
A seemingly minor issue that illustrates how complicated it can really be to open schools is transportation. As the AEI plan points out: How can you do social distancing on the school bus? Do you run three times as many school buses so each kid gets their own row? Do you do that at the same time as you're still using buses to run food to students, as many districts in rural areas are doing?

The more you dig into the details, the more you realize how staggering of an effort this will be.

"It's going to be a scheduling nightmare, a logistical nightmare," Weingarten sums up. "And God forbid a kid or a teacher gets sick. The knives are going to come out that the school is responsible for it."

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A Few Schools Reopen, But Remote Learning Could Go On For Years In U.S.

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subscribe to Coronavirus Daily podcast May 7 is the date that Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, declared it was safe to open up schools. The state has had fewer than 500 reported cases of the coronavirus as of this week.

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Although the school year in Los Angeles is set to begin in mid-August, the prospect of opening 900 campuses will rely on solutions for daunting and costly problems - including whether half a million students and their families would be tested for COVID-19, Supt. Austin Beutner said.

"There has been discussion about the need to have students with families tested, but no clear picture yet drawn as to where the tests would be provided and who will pay for them," Beuntner said in an interview. His staff is working with state and local authorities and a team of UCLA experts on reopening protocols.

Two other major concerns include coming up with a plan - and funding - for supplying masks for students and staff, perhaps multiple masks a day for children, and sanitizing schools, he said.

"The top-to-bottom cleaning that will be necessary and appropriate is different than it might have been just a few months ago," Beutner said. "Schools were cleaned every day, but not necessarily sanitized. It's two different things. Sanitizing is more intensive, costs more."

Beutner also spoke of the difficulty of managing students' safely once they return to campus. He referenced research suggesting that a school environment ranks among the settings where infections would be more likely to spread, on par with college dorms and nightclubs.

As for masks: "Where will those come from? Are we buying them?" asked Beutner, who foresees difficult economic times.

The concern over finances is timely. Gov. Gavin Newsom this week is expected to release his revised budget proposal for next year - as measures to combat COVID-19 have decimated the state budget with a projected $54.3-billion deficit through the summer, the largest in state history. In a worst-case scenario, analysts forecast a 20% cut to education funding.

Beutner responded last week to that dire prospect in a joint statement with Cindy Marten, the superintendent of San Diego Unified, the second-largest district in California.

"That level of spending reduction would make it impossible for schools to safely reopen this fall," the superintendents said. "There is no substitute for learning in a classroom setting and a total reliance on online learning may result in many, perhaps the majority of students, losing the equivalent of a year of their education, permanently damaging their future and exacerbating inequality in our society."

In Los Angeles, the coronavirus emergency has resulted in well over $200 million in unbudgeted expenses. The district has so far drawn on reserves and the proceeds of voter-approved school construction and modernization bonds.

L.A. Unified also is expected to receive about 20% of the federal bailout money that has been set aside for California's schools. The L.A. share, estimated at more than $291 million, is so large because the federal aid is tied to poverty and about 80% of district students are members of low-income households.

Despite the budget uncertainties, Beutner made clear that the district will push forward with its massive food-distribution program throughout the summer, providing meals to tens of thousands of students and their families.

However, he also said it was wrong for other government agencies to rely on L.A. Unified to pay for feeding the broader community. He insisted the school system should be reimbursed for much of this cost.

"Each day we're providing enough meals to give one to every person who lives in Wyoming or Vermont ... a stark reminder of how real the struggle is for many families in the communities we serve," Beutner said in remarks prepared for what has become a weekly broadcast update on Monday morning.

A districtwide distribution of computers to students would be substantially complete by the end of this week, he said, with a last group of elementary schools receiving tablet computers and internet hot spots. Other schools and higher grades have received laptop-style devices.

"My commitment when we closed school facilities on March 13th was to do the best we could, even in these extraordinary circumstances," he said. "Part of that is to make sure every student has a digital device and internet access."

Students in families without adequate technology have been relying on paper packets, phone calls with teachers and managing assignments on smartphones.

Beutner called technology "a necessary precondition" to effective learning: "If you're not connected, and I mean connected in a literal sense, if you don't have a device that works and access to the internet, your chance of engaging in the learning is zero."

In his remarks, the superintendent also relayed several additional developments, including a new process to manage the needs of students with disabilities through online conferences. Not as good as meetings in person, he said, but a step forward.

In addition, Beutner highlighted partnerships to provide new and engaging online content for students. These include:

Instruction on creating an animated film from Illumination, the creators of "Despicable Me" and "The Secret Life of Pets."A "Voyage of the Titanic" with director James Cameron, for high school students to learn about the biology and physics of the deep ocean, underwater exploration and artifact conservation and to hear survivors' stories. Instruction on the science, nutrition and medicine of sports - along with practical advice on a healthy lifestyle from the Los Angeles Chargers.A virtual exploration of space provided by the Columbia Memorial Space Center.Free guitars and ukuleles for up to 1,500 middle school students with help from the guitar company Fender.

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©2020 the Los Angeles Times

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Reopening schools will be pricey and complicated, L.A. schools chief warns

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Although the school year in Los Angeles is set to begin in mid-August, the prospect of opening 900 campuses will rely on solutions for daunting and costly problems - including whether half a million students and their families would be tested for COVID-19, Supt. Austin Beutner said.

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re-opening documents from Shekou (school in China)

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national association of state boards of education

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COVID-19 could change the way schools operate for years to come

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SEATTLE -- Parents know that school will not reopen this academic year in Washington, but what about next year? What will school look like for our kids? There are a lot of unknowns and a lot of questions, but not a lot of answers.

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What does summer school look like during a pandemic?

Chicago Public Schools, like districts across the country, is still deciding. If public health offices say it's safe, Chicago may hold summer school in its buildings, perhaps in small groups. If that doesn't happen, it could be held virtually.

The district has decided one thing: students who received an "incomplete" in a class will get first priority, including students who didn't complete online work or printed work packets while school buildings were closed. But that decision has raised questions, too, about what's fair and whether the district will be able to reach students they struggled to help while school was in session.

"How will targeting students who do not have devices or Internet access for summer school play out, especially since it's likely that summer school will need to be remote as well?" Chicago's teachers union president, Jesse Sharkey, said in a statement. "These students will be further discouraged because they will feel - whether it's the intention or not - punished for that lack of access."

As the summer months approach, school districts across the country are grappling with big questions about how to hold summer school, at a time when helping students catch up has particularly high stakes and the months to come may be devoid of activities that usually occupy children and teens. Already, some cities have announced that summer jobs programs will be canceled, and many beaches, pools, and parks may also be closed.

Many districts are still deciding whether they should try to offer summer school in person or online, whether they should dramatically expand the number of students who attend, and whether the program should focus squarely on catching students up in core subjects.

"Most of them will do some form of summer school, [and] most of them will do it remotely," said Michael Casserly, who heads the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents dozens of the nation's largest city school districts. "I think their preference would be to do it in person, but I think nobody is exactly sure what decisions are likely to get made above them that might require them to go back into online mode. So they mostly decided, let's do it online and turn our attention to other things."

Los Angeles Unified, for example, will hold summer school remotely in four-week blocks. On Monday, the district announced that it will offer all students classes in math and literacy - with an additional focus on language development for English learners - as well as extra enrichment, such as music lessons. Specific classes will target a smaller number of students struggling the most academically.

In Miami-Dade County, district officials plan to offer virtual summer school in the early summer months, mostly for students with disabilities, students who were absent a lot, and students who didn't actively participate in remote learning. If public health officials give the district the go-ahead, Miami also plans to open schools at the end of July for students who are "demonstrating low levels of academic performance" as well as English learners and students with disabilities.

In New York City, middle and high school students who receive a "course in progress" mark will be automatically enrolled in summer school, while students who receive a "need improvement" may need to attend.

The mayor has said online learning will stretch into the summer, and that he anticipates many more students than usual will participate in some kind of summer learning, both to catch up and to stay busy.

"I think we have a much bigger set of kids who are going to need some more help because [of] the disruption that they went through, the trauma they went through, they didn't yet have the iPad, whatever it is," Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

Meanwhile, others are cutting summer school or focusing only on the basics. A mid-size district in Boulder, Colorado, for example, is switching from a summer enrichment program that exposed students to science, technology, engineering, and math to an online program that catches students up on math and literacy. Others, like a small district in Ames, Iowa, have said they plan to cancel summer school entirely and will focus on providing additional instruction when schools reopen, though it's unclear when that may be.

Decisions about summer school can be fraught even in normal times, since students can experience attending as a punishment. With so many students missing traditional classroom time, the extra learning could be particularly helpful - but the lack of state tests, usual grading and attendance policies, and regular contact with teachers will make it hard to determine who needs it most.

And with many students still lacking devices and internet access, it may be hard for students to do summer work remotely. Nationally, students who attend higher-poverty schools have been more likely not to log in or make contact with their teachers while school buildings have been closed, a recent survey from the Education Week Research Center indicates.

Some civil rights groups and large teachers unions, like the American Federation of Teachers, have called for voluntary summer sessions.

There's also the open question of whether school districts will receive extra money to help pay for expanded summer school, and if some will avoid the expense to save money for what is likely to be a tough upcoming budget year.

Many big-city superintendents, and some teachers unions and economists, have called on Congress to put more money for summer school in a future coronavirus relief package.

"With additional federal funds, America's public schools will be able to add summer school, expand the school day after reopening in the fall, retain and stabilize our teaching force, address the needs of our most vulnerable students, narrow the digital divide, and have a fighting chance at salvaging the futures of millions of young people," dozens of superintendents wrote in a letter to Congressional leaders this week.
Cassie Walker Burke contributed reporting. This story was updated on Monday to include newly released information about Los Angeles' summer school program.

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Voluntary? Remote? School districts are grappling with summer school plans

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What does summer school look like during a pandemic? Chicago Public Schools, like districts across the country, is still deciding. If public health offices say it's safe, Chicago may hold summer school in its buildings, perhaps in small groups. If that doesn't happen, it could be held virtually.

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While fall 2020 remains a gray area for K-12 education, ideas are emerging for how schools might blend in-person and online learning for different groups of students on alternating days and in the evenings.

The Cleveland Metropolitan School District is examining splitting classes in half and having each group of students attend on "A Days" and "B Days."

This would allow for social distancing of students as they sit at their desks inside classrooms, CEO Eric Gordon says.

The district may also offer evening sessions to learners who need to catch up, and institute staggered start times that would require keeping buildings open up to 12 hours a day, Gordon says

More from DA: How will schools reopen safely in fall 2020?

Older students would likely continue with more online sessions, but be able to come into schools for tutorials and teacher assistance.

"I think it's going to be a menu. It's going to be several options that meet the need of our community," Gordon says. "A lot will depend on social distancing."

The district may also combine grades when school resumes in the fall. For example, 3rd-graders who move up to 4th grade may be in a class with fourth-graders who had struggled this school year, Gordon says.

"We're thinking about whether we have different schedules for different groups of kids," he says. "The kids who are doing really well get fewer contact days and the kids who need a lot of support get more."

Gordon says he's confident that educators will be able to help students recover from learning loss suffered during the coronavirus closures.

"Just because a student would've learned something in 8th grade in normal a year doesn't mean they can't learn it in 9th grade in this new world," he says. "I've heard people starting to call this a lost generation but we didn't lose this generation. New things will come out of this. We're optimistic."

Online learning provides 'new set of tools'

Las Cruces Public Schools in New Mexico has moved its summer credit recovery program for high school students online, and administrators are now waiting to see how many students plan to enroll in its five-week, K-5 summer program, Superintendent Karen Trujillo says.

The state-funded K-5 program may be negatively impacted by the huge drop in oil prices, a major component of New Mexico's budget, says Trujillo, who is a member of the District Administration Leadership Institute.

Trujillo has been brainstorming with superintendents in New Mexico and around the country to plan for how instruction will take place in the fall.

"We are looking at all options," Trujillo says. "Is it going to be a hybrid model? Will we have students alternating days? What is the health order going to look like?"

For online learning this school year, Trujillo and her administrators worked with the city of Las Cruces to provide families and even some teachers with free internet service for six months.

More from DA: Creativity in crisis-WiFi buses narrow the digital divide

The district's teachers and instructional designers also developed a common curriculum that focused on the most important standards and set learning targets for each grade.

The district now hopes to add a 1-to-1 program in the coming months as the fall could bring a blend of online and in-person instruction, says Trujillo, who has participated in some Zoom classes with Las Cruces' teachers.

"It's amazing that the classroom norms that existed, still exist," Trujillo. "This might not have been a leap that most teachers would've taken but now they have a new set of tools for when we go back."
DA's coronavirus page offers complete coverage of the impacts on K-12. Interested in edtech? Keep up with DA's Future of Education Technology Conference®.

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Online? In-person? How fall 2020 is taking shape.

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While fall 2020 remains a gray area for K-12 education, ideas are emerging for how schools might blend in-person and online learning for different groups of students on alternating days and in the evenings. The Cleveland Metropolitan School District is examining splitting classes in half and having each group of students attend on "A Days" and "B Days."

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When school buildings started to close due to the coronavirus, many teachers and parents thought the disruption would last a few weeks. As the school closures extended, many have clung to the idea that if they made it to fall, life would return to normal.

That's not looking so certain right now.

Teachers unions are warning that sending educators into crowded buildings without widespread testing for coronavirus will amount to an unacceptable risk. Officials in big city districts are finding that some ideas for keeping students further apart, like running extra bus routes and reducing class sizes, could be expensive at a time when budgets are tight. And worries about a second wave of infections have some wondering what once felt far-fetched: Should students just keep staying home?

"We don't have a single member who is not planning for some amount of distance learning next year," said Mike Magee, the CEO of Chiefs for Change, a nonprofit network of district and state education leaders from across the country. "These things are impossible to predict, but it would be foolish not to have a system ready, if in fact you need to continue distance learning or if you have to return students to distance learning at some point next year."

Students and teachers not returning in the fall would bring a host of challenges. Parents would face the continued burden of providing or arranging emergency child care, limiting their ability to work and efforts to kickstart the economy. Kids without computers or tablets would continue to depend on what districts provide, and students requiring special education services and English learners would almost certainly go without some of the support they would have received in person.

But COVID-19 can be deadly, and reopening schools will require some ability to assure teachers, students, and parents that they are safe. In New York City, where 68 education department staffers have died, the teachers union says it won't support a return without testing for all students and staff, daily temperature checks, and tracing of those who come into contact with someone who shows symptoms.

"Despite our members' eagerness to return to their classrooms, we are going to insist that no one - student, teacher or family member - should be back in school until protections like these are in place," New York City's teachers union chief Michael Mulgrew wrote Wednesday.

The leaders of the country's two largest teachers unions have called for similar measures, and have said they wouldn't rule out teachers strikes if schools reopened too soon.

Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, told Politico that if schools reopened without proper safety measures, "you scream bloody murder" and "use your public megaphones."

Already, the heads of some of the country's largest school districts have expressed similar wariness to open quickly. Janice Jackson, the CEO of Chicago Public Schools, has said that remote learning "may be the new normal even in the fall." The superintendent of Los Angeles Unified, Austin Beutner, said the city's schools won't reopen until there is a "robust system" of testing and contact tracing in place.

Is that likely? Though U.S. testing capacity has increased in recent weeks, researchers and public health officials say that in most parts of the country, there is not yet enough testing to allow people to safely go back to work. And while some states are making a big push to hire contract tracers, other states are just starting to plan.

Still, districts are under pressure to reopen. On Monday, President Trump encouraged the nation's governors to "seriously consider" starting to reopen schools as part of his push to jumpstart the economy. According to the Washington Post, the White House is finalizing guidelines, drafted by federal health officials, that suggest schools consider spacing student desks six feet apart, asking staff to wear face masks, and limiting how much student groups mix.

School districts also may not ultimately be in control. In many states, governors ended up making the calls to close school buildings as coronavirus began to spread - and school districts may need to heed their guidance again when it comes to reopening.

For now, school districts are planning for multiple possible scenarios for the fall and trying to work out how much each would cost.

"It's like the decisions they have to make around snow days on steroids," said Michael Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition representing dozens of the nation's largest school districts. "They've been very clear that there's nobody coming to save them, and that the onus is on them to figure it out."

When buildings do open, officials are considering how they could cut down on the time children spend in big groups and institute some forms of social distancing. That could mean relatively minor changes like closing or limiting the use of cafeterias and playgrounds or canceling things like assemblies and extracurricular activities. Even with those changes, whether it's possible to keep kids apart from their classmates in any meaningful way is far from clear.

More sweeping efforts to keep students apart by educating different groups of students in shifts or on opposite days wouldn't fully solve the child care conundrum facing working parents and could be hugely expensive. Staggering start times could mean doubling bus routes, for example.

Schools are also considering whether they should buy different student desks, install plastic barriers, or outfit buildings with hand-washing stations.

"Changes to the physical structure of buildings and changes to transportation ... These types of things are hard under normal circumstances," said Magee of Chiefs for Change. "Trying to, on the fly, outfit your building in a way that allows every student to stay six feet apart throughout the course of the day and wash their hands every hour is not actually a small task."

It would help if the federal government set aside funds to make these kinds of changes. Districts got millions in the wake of the shooting in Parkland, Florida to improve the security of school buildings, Magee noted.

For now, some district budgets are going in the opposite direction, with the economic downturn prompting cuts. The country's biggest teachers unions, several civil rights groups and many superintendents have asked Congress to allocate more money to schools in the next coronavirus relief package.

And some are worried even if they come up with a solid plan for reopening school buildings, parents will choose to keep their children home.

Pike Township Schools, an Indianapolis school district serving about 11,000 students, is considering creating a voluntary online school option for families concerned about sending their children back. They're trying to plan for that scenario without knowing what the district's budget will be or exactly how families will respond once the state-mandated closures end, Superintendent Flora Reichanadter said.

"Parents really want answers to things I can't give them right now, and they are frustrated about that," she said. "And I understand."
Sarah Darville and Emma Kate Fittes contributed reporting.

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Returning to school buildings in the fall will be complicated. In some places, it's far from clear it will happen.

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When school buildings started to close due to the coronavirus, many teachers and parents thought the disruption would last a few weeks. As the school closures extended, many have clung to the idea that if they made it to fall, life would return to normal. That's not looking so certain right now.

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Communication between home and school is a challenge even when all schools are open and there isn't a worldwide pandemic to worry about.

In these challenging times, though, the need to communicate clearly and succinctly is more urgent than ever, given the shift from school-learning to remote-learning, ongoing questions around what constitutes a key worker and parents being burdened with their own workloads, or health worries.

Coronavirus school closures: Keeping in contact with parents

So what is the best way to approach it? We spoke to some school leaders to get their opinions on how to tackle parent communications during school closures.

1. Use regular communications channels

At the Harris Federation, Nick Soar, executive principal at St John's Wood and executive principal at Tottenham for the Harris Academy in North London, says it is important to use all of the available tools at your disposal to have the best chance that messages will reach all of your parents.

"Comms is all about variety," says Soar. "Letters posted in hard copy; digitally sent via email and posted as JPG on Twitter and via text."

He also advises making sure that you adapt your messages to suit the format it is being sent on - i.e., send shortened versions via text and longer ones via email.

2. But find new ones, too

When a school is open, much of the communication between teachers and parents occurs in snatched bits of time: on the gate at pick-up or in the morning before the bell rings.

So when the school doors closed on Friday 20 March, those opportunities vanished. Emily Thompson, a teacher at East Whitby Academy in North Yorkshire, decided to give the parents of her students the chance to join a special Facebook group in order to continue their communication with the school.

"We've had a hugely positive response so far," says Megan Suggit, deputy headteacher of East Whitby Academy. "The parents are loving it as it's private and safe, so they can share videos and pics of their little people, and students are commenting (via parents) on each other's posts."

The benefit of using Facebook, Suggit says, is the way everyone can respond to content. "We are able to react as a team," she says. "TAs and teachers are able to almost instantly respond to pictures and parental posts."

Most importantly, Suggitt feels it reaches parents in a way that more formal methods don't. "I think it's that bit more personal than an email, and actually not all of our parents are confident enough to email back, whereas Facebook is just the norm to them now," she says.

"It's keeping the sense of community going. Our school is a family, and this allows us to feel like a family still."

3. Find the right tone

When people are already feeling fraught and anxious, a letter from the school with an aggressive or reprimanding tone can be damaging to the relationship.

Jon Spears, assistant principal at Tamworth Enterprise College, says now is not the time to send home letters threatening students with sanctions if work isn't completed, or giving dates for examinations on the content they're meant to have completed.

"How we communicate to our students at this time is vital; they are already incredibly anxious about the global pandemic and this has been massively exacerbated by the sudden loss of structure and normality by schools closing their gates on Friday," he says.

"We obviously need to be teaching students remotely and for them to engage with this new way of working, but sending strongly worded letters or emails to students threatening them of severe consequences, such as sitting exams upon return and resetting based upon the work completed during closure, is going to do nothing to support families at this difficult time."

4. Support and comfort

Instead, he says all communication should have the aim of providing support and comfort. "Communication from the school is an opportunity to let each child know they are still part of the school community, that the familiar comfort of their teachers is still there (albeit on a computer screen) and that engaging with the work and their new virtual school is a vital tool in helping with their own wellbeing and mental health," he says.

James Banks, a year five primary school teacher in Essex, agrees, and says schools should ensure that everything they communicate with parents is said in an understanding and compassionate tone.

5. Remember, this is not homeschooling

"It is really important to remind parents this is not homeschooling," adds Banks. "They have not chosen this option, it has come about as a result of an unprecedented emergency situation."

He says it should be made clear that no parent is expected to take on the role of a teacher. "What we should do is tell parents that work is available to support their child, and to reinforce previous learning. This in no way is meant as a replacement for a full taught curriculum."

6. Be aware of family challenges

Most importantly, Banks feels that schools need to communicate with one thing in mind: every family has its own unique set of challenges.

"Every family and their situation is different. They might be working from home with three children in different year groups, or one single parent with an only child fitting in nightshifts around their childcare."

The solution, Banks says, is to ensure that everything you communicate is done as a suggestion and that schools should be as flexible as possible in their suggestions.

"Make sure you make it clear it is OK to find solutions by thinking outside the box," he says. "They can ask older children to listen to younger children read. It's OK to do bits little and often, and it's also totally acceptable to break the activities down into smaller chunks."

He also adds that you should say to parents that it's OK if you find your children resisting the work, you can use the phrase "Let's try and do this now, then we can..."

7. Contact with the right regularity

Before the announcement of the school closures, each school would have had its own timetable for communication with parents.

However, that regularity will naturally have to change now that teachers aren't seeing their students every day, and parents are the ones leading the learning. Ideally, this should lead to more communications, to help foster an ongoing sense of community and make it clear that schools are still committed to their pupils' education and wellbeing.

Will parents see an increase in communication as an irritation? Definitely not, says John Jolly, CEO at Parentkind. "In these uncertain times, it's important that parents continue to feel engaged with their child's school," he says. "We encourage schools to maintain regular contact with parents, where possible providing an opportunity for parents to get in touch, too."

8. React to the need

Spears, from Tamworth Enterprise College, has taken a flexible approach to communication, aiming to provide information as and when it is needed.

"The information we will communicate home will range from factual messages on our website and providing 'how to' guides, to offering support and guidance around mental health and safeguarding," he says.

But there is also an element of strategy in there, too. "As soon as closure was hinted at in the media, our first thought was what we could do support our vulnerable students; as well as trying to post daily messages on Facebook and Twitter, we have also drawn up a plan to ring our most vulnerable parents to make sure they feel supported, and will be sending weekly postcards home so students know they are still very much part of our school community."

However you tackle the communication issue, Spears appeals to leaders to put themselves in the shoes of the parents.

"The reality is that students left our school on Friday in a state of shock. Some will be personally impacted upon by the coronavirus in the most brutal way and our leadership of the situation as a school needs to centre on support and care," he says.

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Coronavirus: 8 ways to handle parent communications

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Communication between home and school is a challenge even when all schools are open and there isn't a worldwide pandemic to worry about. In these challenging times, though, the need to communicate clearly and succinctly is more urgent than ever, given the shift from school-learning to remote-learning, ongoing questions around what constitutes a key worker and parents being burdened with their own workloads, or health worries.

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Survey: Teachers favor moving on to next year’s content in the fall

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Administrators, however, are more supportive of picking up instruction where it left off when school closures began.

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Education Week

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Education Week

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New York Times

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TORONTO -- Discussions about reopening schools in Canada inevitably lead to concerns that children could act as so-called "super-spreaders" of disease transmission, but a study out of one state in Australia that didn't close schools suggests that may not be the case.

Researchers in New South Wales, where children under 19 are four per cent of COVID-19 cases but 23 per cent of the population, found that "data from both virus and antibody testing to date suggest that children are not the primary drivers of COVID-19 spread in schools or in the community."

According to the research, 18 confirmed cases in 15 schools resulted in only two additional transmissions among 881 close contacts.

The public health researchers said that was consistent with international studies that found limited spread of the disease among children and from children to adults. But shutting down schools has been an almost universal reaction to the pandemic.

By April 13, 192 countries had ordered schools to close, affecting more than 1.5 billion young people, according to UNESCO.

All available evidence points to children not being severely affected by COVID-19 themselves, with just 5.1 per cent of Canada's cases being people under 19.

In some provinces, the case rate for children is much lower: 2.4 per cent in Ontario, 2.2 per cent in British Columbia, and 2.7 per cent in Quebec, for instance.

But the thinking is that kids could become infected at school and bring it home to their families or that they could bring it to school from home. That assumption comes from seasonal influenza. Kids are really adept at spreading that.

After all, young children touch almost everything and everyone around them and even if physical distancing is required and constantly reinforced, it's inevitable that kids will forget. Teenagers, by nature, are generally social creatures, too.

DIFFERENT THAN INFLUENZA

But research studying children in Australia suggests kids aren't good vectors for the coronavirus to spread. The data, which hasn't yet been peer reviewed, is gaining attention among public health officials in Canada.

"Children are rarely ill in a significant way, it doesn't mean that there's no cases that are possible, but they are not very ill and unlike what we thought in terms of influenza, where they become great vectors of transmission within a population, it does not seem to be the case (with COVID-19)," Quebec's chief medical officer, Dr. Horacio Arruda, said at a news conference last week when asked about the Australian findings.

He has been under the gun about the province's move to send children back to school beginning May 11. It would start outside Montreal, followed by that city's kids going back May 19.

But Arruda says risks can be managed with physical distancing and other measures, and that schools are important in providing education, as well as food and supports for vulnerable children.

Chief Public Health Officer of Canada Dr. Theresa Tam said Friday that her team is reviewing the Australian study, while several research initiatives are underway in Canada to explore COVID-19 and children. She said it's generally clear that children aren't severely affected by the virus, but more needs to be learned.

"I think we're constantly trying to study what is the role (of children) in transmission. In some studies, so far, it looks like the role might be low, but I don't think we should stop at that. We should just keep evaluating the role because if they if transmitted obviously to the grandparents or to the older population, I think that's where the concern comes in."

Echoing other public health authorities, Tam says the decisions around reopening schools have to balance the public health risk with the education, social, and psychological impacts of not sending kids to school.

THE AUSTRALIAN EXPERIENCE

In New South Wales, nine students and nine staff at 15 schools were confirmed to have COVID-19 from the beginning of March to April 10 when the school term ended. Once confirmed, they were sent home to self-isolate for 14 days, along with all those who came into close contact with them.

Altogether, 753 students and 128 staff were close contacts of these 18 cases. That's defined as being in face-to-face contact for at least 15 minutes or spending two hours in the same room with someone who is infectious.

Researchers at NSW Health and the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance tracked the contacts, performing nose and throat swabs and antibody tests on those who agreed (about one-third of the total). They concluded that it was "most likely, but not certain" that just one child in a primary school and one child in a high school contracted COVID-19 from the initial 18 cases.

"Our investigation found no evidence of children infecting teachers," said the researchers in their report. "One secondary case (in the child in a high school) was presumed to have been infected following close contact with two student cases. The other secondary case was presumed to have been infected by a staff member (teacher) who was a case."

The researchers noted that closing schools comes with a social cost to the community and to children. They made the case that the spread of coronavirus could be contained without shutting down classrooms if students and staff feeling unwell stay home and physical distancing is practised.

But the researchers did acknowledge that, beginning March 23, the premier of NSW encouraged parents to keep their kids at home, despite schools remaining open.

"After this date face-to-face attendance in schools decreased significantly and this may have impacted the results of this investigation."

Kristine Macartney, director of NCIRS and a pediatric disease specialist, told reporters that the results aligned with evidence from China, Iceland and the Netherlands that children have low rates of infection and transmission, and mild symptoms.

NSW will reintroduce in-class teaching for students one day a week beginning May 11, and ramp up attendance to full time by late July.

DO SCHOOL CLOSURES WORK?

An international study published April 6, based on data from the outbreaks of SARS, suggests that "school closures did not contribute to the control of the epidemic."

It also found that modelling studies of COVID-19 "predict that school closures alone would prevent only 2-4 per cent of deaths, much less than other social distancing interventions."

The research team, led by child health experts at University College London, said potential negative effects of school closures including losing healthcare and other essential workers to child-care duties and threats to the welfare of vulnerable students when they don't have schools to care for them.

"Given predictions that social distancing measures might need to be in place for many months or even years, there is an urgent need to identify how countries can safely return students to education and parents to work. Education is one of the strongest predictors of the health and the wealth of a country's future workers, and the impact of long-term school closure on educational outcomes, future earnings, the health of young people, and future national productivity has not been quantified."

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Children wear face masks to help curb the spread of the coronavirus as they play carnival games at a night market in Taipei, Taiwan, on May 3, 2020. (Chiang Ying-ying / AP)

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Children may not be coronavirus super-spreaders: Australian study

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Discussions about reopening schools in Canada inevitably lead to concerns that children could act as so-called 'super-spreaders' of disease transmission, but a study out of one state in Australia that didn't close schools suggests that may not be the case.

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After sudden shutdowns and a scramble to teach classes online, Japan's educators are facing the prospect of another big coronavirus adjustment: starting school in September instead of April.

Although authorities are still weighing the change, which could happen next year, teachers and principals are baffled by the abrupt emergence of an idea that could dramatically alter how the country learns, lives and works.

September starts are a throwback to the Meiji Era (1868-1912). Calls to revert have been considered and shelved in the recent past.

With most schools shut since early March as a precaution against the virus, some students and governors are calling for the start of the academic year to be pushed back to fall, rekindling the debate.

Proponents see the pandemic as a chance to break with the modern calendar. But others warn that's not simply a matter of changing the date anymore, given the way academic life is structured and how job recruitment revolves around it.

"There would be a lot of complications" if other adjustments weren't made too," said Satoshi Hagiwara, principal of Tokyo Metropolitan Nishi High School in Suginami Ward. He said hiring and retirement timetables, as well as the April-March fiscal year itself, might need to be rescheduled. But he is skeptical such sweeping changes can be made just for the sake of the school system.

Takamichi Nakamura, director of career counseling at Tokyo Metropolitan Hibiya High School, said he is worried about where the university entrance exam season would fit into the proposed calendar. Yet he also thinks there might be some "educational benefit" from conforming to the global schedule.

"It would raise students' motivation to go abroad," said Nakamura, who also heads the school's English Department, since it would allow Japanese to seamlessly slide into academic life in another country and vice-versa.

Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike and Osaka Gov. Hirofumi Yoshimura emphasized this potential benefit in an online meeting Thursday. In a joint statement, the governors said the time had come for "bold" change and a "paradigm shift" in society that would incorporate the shift to September school starts.

"It's important we make it easier for our youth to be active in the world," Yoshimura said.

Over 20,000 people have signed an online petition calling for a shift to September school starts. The movement, launched on April 19 by two high school students in Osaka, is aimed at ensuring all students remain on an equal educational footing and reclaiming school days lost to the pandemic.

"Of course, it is uncertain that the coronavirus will subside by September," the petition says. But if the current schedules are retained and schools remain closed, the students will have to graduate in March without being able to enjoy school life in full, it says.

Individual students left comments on the petition as well.

"The significance of school lies in a variety of things, such as building connections with new people and doing extracurricular activities, let alone studying," one university student said. "I don't think online classes can completely replace them."

"I've been wondering why school starts in April," wrote another supporter, noting that another drawback of the Japanese educational cycle is having to take exams during the cold and flu season.

Another online petition opposing the proposal has drawn more than 2,000 signatures since it was launched on April 28.

"For now we should focus on measures against the coronavirus," rather than a change in the school calendar, one said. "If they want to eliminate the educational inequality, it would serve their purpose better to think of ways to study while schools are closed."

The September start proposal has been an option discussed especially for universities.

Back in 1987, an advisory panel on education reform set up by late Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone made a recommendation to shift the school year to September, but cautioned against an immediate transition in light of the need to build public consensus. In 2007, a legal revision gave university presidents the power to determine when to kick off their own academic years.

In 2012, University of Tokyo President Junichi Hamada attracted national attention by announcing a plan to make a full transition to the September school year, leaving a gap between acceptance in spring and enrollment in autumn. The goal was to bolster international competitiveness. But the nation's most prestigious university soon abandoned the plan due to resistance from within. Doubts also emerged about how students would spend their "gap period."

In its final report in 2014, an education ministry panel discussing the issue with Hamada's participation reviewed the pros and cons of shifting to September.

On the bright side, the switch would "enhance the international flow of students by staying in line with the school year calendars in the U.S. and Europe," the report said.

The new calendar would also, obviously, change the timing of graduation to summer - affecting the many companies that hire fresh graduates each year. The report warned that both hiring and certification exams, like those for doctors, would fall out of sync because they hinge on graduation being held in March.

But the latest debate on the issue includes not only universities but elementary and secondary schools - though details remain scant.

Government officials are divided: While Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is positively considering it, the education ministry is taking a more cautious stance.

At a news conference Tuesday, education minister Koichi Hagiuda said, "It is not an issue that can be managed only by the education ministry. Because it affects the whole of society, adjustments are needed accordingly."

For now, there is little that families and educators can do but wait to see what the Abe administration has in mind. The government is reportedly aiming to announce guidance early next month.

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Japan school closures reignite debate on shifting academic year to September start | The Japan Times

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After sudden shutdowns and a scramble to teach classes online, Japan's educators are facing the prospect of another big coronavirus adjustment: starting school in September instead of April. Although authorities are still weighing the change, which could happen next year, teachers and principals are baffled by the abrupt emergence of an idea that could dramatically alter how the country learns, lives and works.