SCHOOLS

Salem-Keizer schools scramble to switch to distance learning after state says schools likely won’t re-open

Judson Middle School students in a seventh grade language arts on Oct. 30, 2018. (Rachel Alexander/Salem Reporter)

NOTE: Salem Reporter is providing free access to its content related to the coronavirus as a community service. Subscriptions help support this.

Any hope of resuming a normal school year for local teachers, parents and students disappeared with the state’s latest decision on how to educate Oregon’s 583,000 students.

Judson Middle School teacher Dean Wright was in bed, about to go to sleep when he saw an email explaining Oregon’s public schools would likely be closed for the rest of the school year, and he and his colleagues would be expected to teach students remotely.

The Oregon Department of Education advised school districts, teachers and the public of the change just after 9 p.m. Monday.

“I said goodbye to my kids for the last time without realizing,” Wright said. “For people who aren’t teachers, that might be hard to understand. But when you’re with these kids for months on end and you’re building this relationship and this connection … that’s a lot.”

Local parents and teachers so far have few answers on what a new, mostly online educational system will look like in Oregon’s second-largest school district, which serves about 41,000 students.

Parent Laura Tesler, a former Salem City Councilor who has a 19-year-old son in a high school special education program, said she’s been frustrated with the lack of guidance for parents. 

“There’s been no communication from the teacher. There’s been no communication from the district. And they’ve had two weeks to think about what they’re going to do,” she said.

Many parents voiced similar frustrations in Facebook groups and on Reddit as the news made its way through the community.

Tesler’s son’s school program is focused on helping him become an independent adult, learning skills like riding the bus and working outside the home.

There’s no way to provide that education remotely, she said.

“There’s no accommodation in there for anybody who doesn’t learn with the computer,” she said.

Superintendent Christy Perry said she, too, was blindsided by the state’s new orders Monday night and understood parents’ frustrations. Just hours before the change, she and other district administrators were briefing the Salem-Keizer School Board on their plans for optional, supplemental instruction.

“I hear them. I am sorry that we’re all in this situation. I was working really hard and hoping that I had a pulse on where we were headed as a state,” she said.

Public schools closed their doors March 16 on orders from Gov. Kate Brown to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. The closure was originally scheduled to end April 1, but was soon extended to April 28.

Until Monday night, the state Education Department told school districts to provide optional “supplemental learning” activities for students to do at home, but not assign, collect or grade schoolwork.

Then late Monday, they changed course, releasing a 20-page outline for “distance learning for all.” Districts that spent the past two weeks developing plans for optional coursework had to switch gears. 

“If we’d just been doing (distance learning) all along, we could have been further along,” Perry said.

Education department spokesman Marc Siegel said the state rules changed as it became clear to education department officials students would be out of school far longer than the initial closure was planned for. 

Asked why the state announced the switch at 9 p.m. with no advance notice to districts, Siegel said in an email, “We felt it was better to begin this shift now, rather than wait. We also know our schools want to serve students to the best of their ability and that school districts and communities are eager for this information. We wanted to get the information out to school districts as soon as it became available.”

Under the guidelines, local schools should provide direct instruction from teachers daily, no more than 45 minutes for kindergarteners, and up to three hours for middle and high school students. That teaching should be supplemented by other activities on the student’s own time, like taking practice SATs or reading with parents.

Even with those activities, most students will spend far less time in school than they would under normal circumstances. Salem-Keizer elementary school students are typically in class about six hours per day, and middle and high schoolers about seven.

Teachers will be required to evaluate student progress, though whether that’s by letter grades, a pass/fail system or other assessments is up to each school system.

Schools are also expected to provide equal access and services to special education students and students learning English, though guidance on how to do so is sparse. Perry said superintendents were told they can’t bring students into school buildings, even in small groups, to teach special education classes or provide other services like occupational therapy.

It’s not clear if all high school classes can continue remotely. Some, like band or wood shop, are difficult to do with students at home.

There’s still no word from the state if and how high school graduation requirements might change for the Class of 2020, frustrating high school teachers and principals tasked with helping seniors earn a diploma. Asked if those guidelines would be out this week, Siegel said the state would publish them in “early April.”

The situation is uncharted territory for districts around Oregon, said Jim Green, executive director of the Oregon School Board Association and a Salem-Keizer parent and former school board member.

While schools have emergency closure and operation plans, they’re focused on natural disasters, which assume buildings may be destroyed but teachers and students can still gather somewhere for classes. A respiratory disease pandemic wasn’t high on most contingency plans, he said.

“A lot of it centered around the Cascadia subduction zone issue, not around the idea that our buildings are going to be perfect, our employees are going to be perfect, you just can’t be around each other,” Green said.

District must have remote learning plans in place by April 13. In Salem-Keizer, Perry said the earliest parents should expect to see a plan is late next week.

Teachers will spend this week talking one-on-one with families, something Salem-Keizer had planned to do anyway, Perry said. Each student will get a call at home from their child’s teacher to assess how the family is doing, answer questions and figure out what they need to participate in remote classes.

The district is also passing out Chromebooks to students Thursday and Friday at six high schools. Students of any age can borrow the laptops for free to help connect to online classes, and the district has ordered wi-fi hotspots, though Perry said they need to do more to provide Internet access to students who don’t have it at home.

Cortney Clendening, a first-grade teacher at Clear Lake Elementary School, started calling her 26 students Tuesday. Many have questions she can’t answer, she said, but they’ve been glad to get any update.

For now, she’s trying to emphasize parents aren’t expected to replicate a full school day schedule at home.

“I’ve tried to reassure parents that they are not expected to sit down for six hours of the day and teach their children,” she said.

One child in her class has two parents working in healthcare who often can’t be home with their kids during the day. That’s made her realize her instruction might need to be pre-recorded video so families can work on their own schedules, she said. Other parents have multiple kids who share a computer.

Clendening said the news has brought waves of emotion. She expected the school closure might extend all year as she saw other states take that step in recent weeks, but didn’t want to believe it until Monday night.

“I cried. I probably cried for about two hours last night feeling overwhelmed, feeling helpless, worrying about my kids and our families,” she said. Teacher friends in Salem-Keizer and other districts reached out with similar fears and emotions, she said.

But Wright and Clendening want families to know they’re eager to help and figure out how to keep doing their jobs under circumstances none of them foresaw.

“Teachers are really trying their hardest right now,” Wright said.

McNary High School Principal Erik Jespersen said he hopes the chaos will give way to positive change as teachers get more comfortable with online platforms and find new ways to teach and collaborate.

“We just need to reconnect, let kids know and families know that we care about them,” he said. “This is all new and we’re going to learn this together.”

Contact reporter Rachel Alexander at [email protected] or 503-575-1241.

Rachel Alexander is Salem Reporter’s managing editor. She joined Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers city news, education, nonprofits and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for a decade. Outside of work, she’s a skater and board member with Salem’s Cherry City Roller Derby and can often be found with her nose buried in a book.