Parents - What is your child's school doing about completing the school year?

[VandVsmama]

The last time my kids were in a physical classroom was 3/6. The week of 3/9 was our spring break. Then distance learning started the week of 3/16. Our school is using Microsoft Teams. So far, it's going really well with a few bumps in the road, but the school teachers and administration has been very responsive, understanding, and everyone is adjusting accordingly.

The school told us prior to the start of spring break that if a total shut down was ordered, they had a plan in place for distance learning. They basically implemented that plan.

My kids are in 6th and 8th grade. They have final exams at the end of the year. Our school year ends just before Memorial Day and schools are all closed here through the end of the school year. Final exams will all be online and are scheduled for only 1 per day spread over about a 2-week period.

The principal said that for seniors (12th graders), there WILL be an in person graduation ceremony. At end of July instead of May.

 

[brockash]

I can't imagine all kids getting held back a year do to the virus. I think some sort of concession needs to be considered. What happens with student that are in the 12 grade and were scheduled to graduation? Or those that were heading off to college in fall? I think a "catch up program" should be implemented.

Currently, my kid's school is conducting it's classes online. They JUST started this today. I was looking into just completely home schooling too.

No students are getting held back a year due to covid...that would never work. At our schools, 2 of mine (12th & 7th grade) are doing classes online and still getting grades. My youngest has work packets, but none is to be turned in and no grades. My ds has friends in other states and a few of them are completely done with school (basically they didn't do a 4th quarter.) All will move on to their next grade.

 

[TJA]

I can't speak for our entire state, but we are here in Western NY. I have 2 Juniors taking mostly AP classes.

On Friday March 13, our school made sure each kid brought home their laptops and teachers verbally prepared each student for distance learning which they believed would begin on Monday March 16 (which it did). So my kids have been "in school" since this first started on March 16. LOADS of homework. Zoom classes Monday-Friday. They say they're still learning, but they are nervous for the AP exams next month. They desperately want to get back to school in early May so they can have a few classes before the AP exams.

As far as next year, some classes will be difficult to transition to (like distance learning Pre-Calc this year and then having to take AP Calc next year), but I know teachers will do their best for the kids. There is no talk about re-taking anything. They are still taking tests and getting grades, and the current plan is to continue that.

 

[traviesojmt]

We are very fortunate that our school was already set up to transition to online pretty easily. My DD is a junior and attends a University Model school. I guess you can think of it as a private school/homeschool hybrid. As a college prep, it is similar to the three day week schedule of college classes. She attends three days/week and works full days Tuesday and Thursday from home. All students were already required to have the necessary equipment to work from home.
Since they have had to eliminate standardized testing and have chosen to eliminate finals, they are reducing the school year by two weeks. Other than that, her classes are teaching/grading as normal. We just started week five. So, for example, her calculus teacher records herself teaching the lesson and posts it first thing every morning. The students can send questions or request a zoom meeting to go over issues. Teachers are slowing down the workload a bit due to the lack of face to face teaching time but we don’t think it is a big change for us.
The big issue is that AP tests have been changed so teachers are working to adjust to those changes.
We are very grateful that the transition was handled so smoothly. I realize that isn’t possible for everyone

 

[AtlantaDisneyDreamer]

I teach in a public high school in North Georgia. My kids are in middle and elementary school in the same district. We got guidance last week that all middle school will be pass/fail. Elementary school students will go to the next grade up with pass/fail as well. High school students cannot have their grades go lower than they were when we left in March, but they can continue to work to raise their grades if they so choose. Students can freeze their grade as soon as they are happy with their grade, but they can and should continue working and learning. We teachers are continuing to provide daily assignments and support for students. Many parents have emailed me and told me that their student will continue working and learning at home. Others have emailed me and said that their students are going to freeze their grades at this point and no longer wish to turn in assignments. We have asked them to continue reading and learning at home on their own. I am providing suggested reading, and our school uses USA Test Prep, so students can continue working at their own pace at home if they have chosen to freeze grades.

It can actually be a really ideal situation because students get what they have been asking for: time to learn and build skills without having to worry about grades. I have been emailing and communicating with students and parents all day, trying to tailor assignments to individual student needs. Of course, I am not blind to the reality that many students will just freeze their grades and give up at this point. But many of them have parents who are requiring their children to continue doing their work so they can build their skills for next year. I am doing that with my girls at home. They will continue to read and learn and complete assignments daily. Their teachers are dedicated and working hard to help their students build the skills and knowledge they need for next year. They send daily work assignments and communicate with us. The grades may be frozen, but the learning continues.

 

[BelleOftheBall16]

My son is a freshman and his last day was 3/18. Ever since then they have been doing ‘review work’ aka nothing. Today is the first day of real distance learning. So far only his math & PE teachers seem to have a real plan. The math teacher does something similar to Zoom with the kids to teach them. For PE all he has to do is submit a weekly log showing he did 30 minutes of physical activity M-F. They have already announced that the kids won’t be going back this year. Also like some of the previous posters, grades can only go up, not down.

 

[Dole_whip_doll]

Here’s how is been here (P=parents, S= school)

S= we will be staying open
P= what? That’s not fair! But this disease is deadly horrible and rapidly contagious! I’m so scared! My babies! They’ve closed ALL schools around us! They need to close here.

S=(4 hours later) we will be closing for x amount of time due to Coronavirus
P= what? That’s not fair! But this disease is a joke and a hoax! What am I supposed to do with them all day! They better be sending work!

S= students will move to distancing education. Use google classroom or come pick up packets.
P= what? That’s not fair! But I cannot help them with this! That is the TEACHER’S job, not mine! I’m just supposed to clothe and feed them—by the way will there be free meals?

S=meals will be available for pickup x time to y time at z location
P= what? That’s not fair! But I cannot drive, walk, go with someone to get that food at that time/day/location. They need to deliver it and the work to me!

S=if you’re child is having issues with the work, please email his teacher.
P= what? That’s not fair! But my child needs one on one step by step spoken instructions from his teacher, they call him Pookie and it makes him work better. NVM, I know where the teacher lives. (Knock knock knock) Hi teacher, Pookie doesn’t understand so I told him we’d stop by and you’d just teach through the screen door till he got it. Ok I’m going to go find toilet paper now, BYE!

P=We need prom! We need graduation! We need the 2nd grade salute to bumblebees fun time! We need field days and field trips! You better get those teachers to come by in a parade! What? They are only going to make the usual parade route circle? They need to come all the way out to where I live in another town, in another county, 20 miles away.

 

[verleniahall]

Kansas was the first state to acutally close school for the remainder of the year - they have actually graded assignments and they can still fail and be held back

 

[MarkLT1]

Here’s how is been here (P=parents, S= school)
...

that sounds horrible. Sorry to hear your area is going through that. We must be very fortunate in the area we live. Ours has been more like:
(P=parents, S=school, T=Teachers, G=Governor)

G: We are shutting down schools for 2-weeks. Most schools have their spring break in that period, so think of it as a bonus spring break week. The schools will be using that time to implement and test their distance learning, should we not be able to return to school.
S: Enjoy your 2-week spring break. We'll be working hard to implement distance learning. Here is a detailed look at how with think it will work.

2-weeks later:
G: Schools will be shut down indefinitely.
S: Good thing we spent a ton of time and effort into getting distance learning up and running. Parents- here is a very detailed website showing how things will work at various levels (K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12). Your teacher will be in touch today with more details.
T: Here are a bunch of details of how we'll be using the various technology to implement this. Rollout might be a bit rough, so please be patient. This sucks, but lets make the best of it.
P: Here we go.

<technology collapses on the first day>
P: ***?
S: Sorry, the technology is down. Dont worry about it too much. It is going to be a bit rough the first few days. We'll text you when everything is back up and running.
S: <text message> Tech is back up. Give it a try.
(rinse and repeat the first few days)
S: Sorry about those first few days. Our vendors were crumbling under the load. We think its fixed.

<everything starts running smoothly>
1-week later:
T: Please let me know if there are any concerns you have, or things we might be able to do better.
P: <list of minor gripes about how certain things work>
S: We received these issues, and are addressing them.

1-week later:
S: Here are a list of issues y'all were kind enough to bring to our attention. Here is how we have fixed, or are fixing them. Please feel free to communicate how things are going.
P: Wow.. it is really starting to work well now.
T: Yay!

Sure, there have been a few things which haven't lended themselves to distance learning, but overall, I think the response in our state, district, and school has been nothing short of amazing. And the parents/community has really come together to make things work as well. (I'm sure there is a subset of parents in our community that are complaining about this situation- luckily none of my kiddos' friends, nor other parents we communicate with seem to fall into that category)

 

[DisneyOma]

We are (high school) only getting credit/no credit grades, due to a "lack of equity" across our district. Our school does not have enough laptops for everyone to have one at the same time, and lots of kids do not have their own one at home.

FWIW, this pandemic showed the town how horribly behind we were in technology.

 

[Kittyblue]

This is for a kid in upper elementary -So far they have handed out a packet and we are supposed to pick up a new packet this week. They also have chromebooks available to borrow starting this week, although DD already has one so we aren't going to be using a school chromebook.

Here we've been told the goal of the homework packet is to review and maintain the skills they've learned and there would be no new material. School closed a week or so before spring break, and after spring break they were just going to review for state testing and after that most teachers here just seem to do assignments that are more just for fun. Parent's have also basically been told in so many words the homework packets don't really count for anything, so IDK how many kids are going to actually do the work. I have to admit we don't do all of it. I focus on the online assignments from her acutal teachers first, review math skills I know she's lacking next, and work on the generic packet last.

If your kid needs some help in math, I've loved using Khan Academy. It's free with videos and sample problems. I'm ok with most of the youngest's math so far, but when my older daughter was in junior high and high school we had to watch some Khan Academy videos to help with her math because it had been too long!

Oh, did I mention they are currently on Spring Break? A Spring Break from WHAT?!? Nobody traveled, my wife and I are still working (thankfully) - how exactly are we justifying a Spring Break?

Schools are only in session a certain number of days each school year. If they dropped spring break they'd have to remove 6 days (in our case) from the end of the school year. I imagine they'd also have to get approval from the county, the school board, and the union. It's probably easier just to stick with the agreed upon schedules.

 

[Colleen27]

Our school does an excellent job with online learning. We had a principal who successfully led a fundraising campaign several years ago to provide Chromebooks to all students, and he developed a distance learning plan that we could implement in the event that we exceeded our built-in allowance of snow days. We'd only used it twice and he retired last year, but it has been sort of funny to see all of the posts on Facebook thanking him for his foresight because it put us in a much better position to deal with this than we would have been otherwise. Our teachers have done a great job too - DD11 has two classes via Zoom Tues & Thurs, and two others on Mon & Wed, plus an all-school call with the principal every Friday. Assignments are done on iXL in some subjects and Google Classroom in others, and major papers are turned in via Google Docs and Slides.

This whole thing has really made me appreciate how small our school is. Having only a handful of kids in each class - DD11 has 15 in her 5/6 split and that's the biggest class in the school - makes the Zoom experience better and allows teachers to have one-on-one meetings during "office hours" as needed. Based on how the all-school call goes, with 50ish kids, I can't imagine that 30+ kids in a Zoom class can really be much more than a lecture.

ETA: I haven't heard yet from my friends with kids in public school how they're handling things. We're a rural district and have households that don't have the option of getting broadband at their residence, and there are a lot of kids that used to rely on the public library for internet access to do homework, so I fully expect there will be big challenges and that the work will essentially end up being optional some how so that kids who don't have home internet aren't penalized grades-wise.

 

[wildride]

Not a parent- Grand here. But I do know both girls are doing online with teachers. One is 5th the other 1st. Both teachers have been above & beyond

thanks to all teachers out there

 

[rlk]

New York City parent of a high school senior. I believe schools closed on 3/16 and online learning officially started on 3/23. My son started with a lot of work the week before 3/23. They canceled spring break(this week). We received an email from his principal this morning stating that there will be a graduation ceremony in some form. If they can't do it live, they will have a virtual ceremony. AP tests are online in May.