Guest Column: We ask for patience, flexibility and support

Published 12:30 am Thursday, August 6, 2020

“Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”

— John Wooden, former UCLA basketball coach

This quote resonates with me as we begin an unprecedented school year, one we never could have possibly imagined, and one that continues to raise a lot of valid questions and concerns. As we enter this year, I want to focus on what is possible during a very uncertain time.

In the last two weeks, we have received both new guidelines from the Oregon Department of Education on masking and cohort requirements (the number of people we can have in an area of the school building at one time), as well as health metrics from the state around positive coronavirus case rates and the number of cases.

It was clear from evaluating these guidelines and metrics that it was not prudent to try to bring students and staff back into buildings at this time.

The safest route is to start our school year remotely.

Our staff, administrators and board members are deeply concerned with how these choices are going to affect our students and their families. We are concerned about connectivity — both from a technology and emotional standpoint. We are concerned about the families that require child care so parents can work. We are also concerned about the health and safety of the staff, students and families in our district.

And, we are working to address all of those concerns in an ever-changing environment. Our community’s safety and the guidelines laid out by the Department of Education led to our decision.

What you should know:

• Over 50 members of our staff, when surveyed, stated they were considered at risk or live in the same household as someone who is at risk.

• Over 12% of parents, when surveyed, stated they were were not going to send their kids back to school until they felt it was safe to do so. Over 33% of parents were unsure based on health and safety if they were going to send their kids back to school.

• Remote learning is not our choice by preference. It is our choice because of the findings of our task force that determined that all students would have to participate in remote learning on some level because of the social distancing and cohort requirements outlined by the state and the lack of sufficient space within our school buildings and adequate staffing to achieve those requirements.

• Parent and staff feedback from the end of the last school year showed us that we need to make significant improvements to the remote learning that was offered in the spring.

When we introduced remote learning in the spring, it was not the ideal situation. Teachers had to take their in-person lesson plans and translate them into remote plans with no time for planning, technology training or preparation.

We hope that by starting remotely and announcing it in advance of the school year, we can provide teachers and families adequate time to prepare, which they did not have this spring. This will help us to continue to promote the health and safety of our staff and students, as well as their families, amid this ongoing pandemic.

We want kids back in school buildings, as we know that this is the best model for learning for kids. We also know that we need to do it in a manner that puts the safety of our school community first.

What I ask from each of you is patience, flexibility and support.

We plan to reassess the situation in early October to determine if it is safe to start slowly phasing some students back to in-person instruction — and we will be continually evaluating and discussing with our families, staff and community throughout this process.

We will return to in-person instruction. But we must work together now to make that a reality through doing everything we can to keep ourselves and others healthy and to drive down transmission rates.

Join me in keeping our children and community safe.