Clark County superintendent presents plans for ongoing distance learning

With schools slated to remain closed for the rest of the school year, the Clark County School District is putting together a “comprehensive digital learning plan” for all students moving forward, Superintendent Jesus Jara said Thursday.

School officials laid out some details of the district’s working plan at the Clark County School Board meeting. But Jara stressed that if in-person schooling cannot resume safely at all during the summer or next fall, the district will need assistance and guidance from the state and federal governments.

“If this is a reality, then obviously a really strong conversation and partnership with the leadership at the state level and also at the county (is needed),” Jara said.

For now, the district’s distance learning plan will remain in place through May. It includes non-mandatory “online, virtual and paper correspondence” between students and educators, said Brenda Larsen-Mitchell, chief curriculum instruction and assessment officer for CCSD.

No new details were released Thursday on how many students were contacted by teachers, how many completed assignments or classwork or how many teachers successfully made “two-way” contact with students this week. But officials said they’ve made headway on an issue that has created challenges for teachers and administrators: students and families who have been unresponsive to calls, emails and other forms of communication.

Through a new initiative, social workers and attendance officers safely met with 62 out of 189 students on Thursday who had been unresponsive to contact, said Mike Barton, chief college, career and equity officer. Staff identified the barriers students faced in completing assignments, the largest one being issues with Infinite Campus, the online system in which students receive credit for classwork, according to Barton.

“I’m glad we were able to make contact with students today that we were unable to make contact with in the last few weeks,” he said.

In addition, regional leaders in the district have worked with principals to identify “hotspots” of students who have not engaged in any education during the closures, Larsen-Mitchell said.

“We’ve been working very diligently with our educators on actively tracking student contacts. Some of our previous hotspots we’d seen regarding student contacts have improved,” she said.

The district also shared updates on the distribution of Chromebooks to students in need of a device. About 60,500 Chromebooks have been deployed, and another 152,183 are ready for deployment as necessary, Barton said.

Although distance learning has been in place for a month, some elementary school students who need Chromebooks still have not received them, officials said. The district hopes that a new central deployment process — conducted by central administrators, rather than school principals — will reach the remainder of students.

“We continue to monitor the deployment process every week,” Barton said.

District officials say they are monitoring students’ learning progress and will use that data to deliver special supports to students as needed this summer. Per a request from the trustees, officials agreed to track student achievement by demographics as well.

Moving into the summer, the district has identified some strategies for summer schooling if normal in-person learning is still not entirely possible, Larsen-Mitchell said. Most of the ideas fall into the category of “blended learning” — a combination of remote and in-person activities — and include having “staggered” bell times and staggering the number of students in the building at a time to limit crowding, she said.

“We all hope that by August 2020, our efforts focus on the typical operations of schools with enhancements we’ve learned through implementing distance education,” she said. “However, we must be ready for our students, parents and educators with alternative operations should the conditions demand them.”

Jara said he is forming a working group that will consist of parents, principals from elementary, middle and high schools, and other staff to gauge their ideas on blended learning.

Given that the district expects budget cuts due to the financial impact of COVID-19, federal funding could be a crucial resource during the summer, Jara said.

“We’re waiting on direction from the federal government. When I say direction, how much money we’re going to receive,” he said.