Arlington schools students will start academic year online; board discusses fall plans
Students in Arlington schools will not have the option to return to campus at the start of the school year this fall, a reversal to a previous plan that gave parents the option to send their children to campus or keep them home for online learning.
Arlington School Board members said at a meeting Monday night that, with the risks created by the novel coronavirus pandemic, students will begin the school year online. The board discussed the issue for five hours, including time to hear public comments.
Trustee Kecia Mays said the plan could still change based on new data, but Superintendent Marcel Cavazos said that students will not be returning to campus when the school year starts on Aug. 17.
Tarrant County’s top health authorities announced Tuesday that all local public and non-religious private schools will only be able to provide online classes for the first six weeks of the 2020-21 school year — until at least Sept. 28 — because of the rising cases of coronavirus.
The announcement impacts Fort Worth, Arlington and all local school districts.
More than 1,700 people were watching the livestream of the Arlington ISD board meeting on YouTube early on. When the meeting ended around 11:15 p.m. Monday, that number was just below 800.
Cavazos said Arlington school officials will continue to monitor advice and guidance from the state and local health officials on when to return to in-person classes.
Plans for online learning
Unlike when classes went online in the spring, students will have not be working at their own pace each week but will be required to virtually attend classes at a scheduled time each day. Trustee Bowie Hogg said online learning this fall will not be anything like what the district had over the spring.
“Spring was a crisis online learning and I commend staff for putting on a program in two weeks,” Hogg said. “While the spring did its job, it was really rigorous and relevant to get our students where they needed to go.”
Courses will not be pass-fail this time, either, and course credit will require 90% attendance. That could include attending a scheduled class or, in some cases, something as simple as submitting assigned work every day.
Some courses and activities like career technologies courses that require in-person attendance, some fine arts courses and athletics may be able to support bringing students to campus just for those classes even if school starts with online-only education.
That will depend on guidance from local health officials, Cavazos said.
The district has plans to provide breakfasts and lunches to students through 25 pickup locations across the district, and students who prefer course materials on paper will be able to pick up print copies of those materials from their campuses.
Special services for students who are in ESL courses or have learning disabilities or difficulties such as dyslexia will still receive those services, just online. The district will provide live, synchronous support online along with counseling and academic advising.
Online meetings with teachers, counselors or academic advisers will be scheduled ahead of time.
Gifted and talented programs will continue online on a scheduled basis, as well.
Students who need devices or internet hot spots to connect with their online classes will have those resources provided by the district, Chief Academic Officer Steven Wurtz told the board.
Assistant Superintendent Tracie Brown said the district has a total of 60,000 devices for students who need them. When classes went online over the spring, 24,000 of those devices were checked out. Brown said they have enough devices for any students who need them.
Some classes may be held later in the day, after what would normally be considered regular school hours. Cavazos said that will partly depend on scheduling ability but the district is trying to be flexible.
Preventing infection
The district also has plans for how to handle an eventual return to school.
If a student or employee on a campus becomes infected with the virus, Brown said, the district will notify local health officials, parents and news outlets, close the school for sanitation and trace contacts the infected individual had.
The infected individual and anybody they’ve come in contact with will be required to isolate for six weeks, she said. The school should be ready to reopen within five days after the individual is diagnosed, for those who did not have more than 15 minutes of contact with the infected person.
When schools do reopen, the district has been provided with 160,000 face masks by the Texas Education Agency, along with 8,000 face shields, 15,000 gallons of hand sanitizer and reusable spray bottles to regularly disinfect classrooms.
The district is also waiting on a shipment of contact-free thermometers from the Texas Education Agency. Brown said the district has several already on hand.
Students who are borrowing devices will take them to school and back home every day when campuses open back up. Students who have their own devices will be asked to bring those instead of borrowing one.
Teachers will also be taught the proper way to use and equip any person protective equipment like gloves and masks. District officials also said they would look into upgrading heating and air conditioning filters to a level that will be better at filtering out the virus.
The district is also helping teachers prepare syllabi that work both for in-person and distance education in case students return to school and then have to go back home because of an infection in the school.
Other measures include having masks for students on buses, sanitizing classrooms after every class and making sure buildings are empty by one hour after the final bell to sanitize the whole building.
Community reaction
Parents, employees and community members had mixed feelings about delaying the return to classes.
Some employees and parents spoke and said they have safety concerns about getting back to campus right away.
Malissa Reardon, a chemistry PhD student and teacher in the district, said that the need to return to normalcy is high, but so is the need to keep people safe.
Jeannie Deakyne, president of the Arlington Council of PTAs, said she and other parents want to see classes online only at the start of the school year due to health concerns.
Other parents, such as Michael Martin, said the district should stick to its previous plan to allow parents to decide whether students return to campus immediately or start the year online.
Cook Children’s Hospital’s Dr. Marc Mazade told the Star-Telegram that students should return to schools to properly educate them. He and other physicians and experts at the hospital created a list of tips for school districts to keep students and employees safe when returning to school.
Hope Aguilera, another parent, said she just wanted the district to make a decision.
She said the school board has failed its community in being slow to finalize a plan. She said kids need to be on campus for emotional and social learning just as much as academic learning, but at this point she just wanted to know what the final plan would be so she could create her own plans.
Cavazos later said the district has been waiting on guidance from the TEA and health officials to make their plans. He said things would be a lot easier if the TEA would allow hybrid learning for students of all grade levels, not just high school.
Trustee David Wilbanks said he understand those parents who want to get their kids back in school but that that is untenable right now.
“Our decision needs to be based on science and what maximizes learning for everyone,” Wilbanks said. “I know that every one of my colleagues on this board believe that the best learning environment for our students is in the classroom, but we have to be safe.”
This story was originally published July 21, 2020 at 11:23 AM.