School district to submit plan to state by Friday

With school closure continuing to at least April 30 due to the coronavirus pandemic, Humboldt and every other district in Iowa has to submit a plan to the state by Friday on how they would finish requirements for high school students.
Humboldt interim school superintendent Mike Sherwood gave an in-depth report at the Humboldt School Board meeting on April 6.
“The Governor and the State Department of Education announced a plan has to be filed with the state by Friday, requiring how we are going to deliver instruction through April 30,” Sherwood said.
“There are two options, the district can either do a voluntary or required educational plan,” Sherwood said.
“We started discussions today and we will continue those on Wednesday and we’ll write our applications on Thursday. It may be that part of the district is under a voluntary plan, which we are currently doing by providing resources for learning in packets and other items online,” Sherwood said. “Or it may be required, which I think is what you are looking at the high school level when you talk about graduation requirements.”
“The details will be worked out this week and we’ll have our plan submitted by Friday,” Sherwood said. “The staff has been doing quite a bit of work to prepare for this. There are different requirements within that required plan.”
“High school principal Lori Westhoff has gone through and looked at the high school students and their credits and where they stand. She has let every student know where they are at and what credits they need to move on,” Sherwood said.
“Once we get the plan submitted, we will probably conduct a voluntary delivery system the first week (April 20-24) and then move to a required delivery system, possibly at the high school level, from that point forward,” Sherwood said.
High school instructor Greg Wickett, who was in attendance at Monday’s meeting, said the required delivery system would begin on Monday, April 27.
“If the governor cancels school for the rest of the year, then the idea is that we would have a good month to six weeks of required work the students can do to earn their credits,” Wickett said. “That is our preliminary plan.”
“We are looking at how we will post these assignments. We have an idea of how we want to do it but there are technology things we need to work out. We feel really good about what we are doing so far and the idea of ramping it up like that is to work the kinks out before it is required,” Wickett said.
“The third option the state has given districts is do nothing during this current down time, but you would have to be going to school all summer to make up for lost time,” Sherwood said.
“The staff have been asked what are the critical standards up to this point that need to be made sure they get taught prior to the end of the school year. They have been asked to identify the gaps as well,” Sherwood said.
“One of the questions we have right now deals with eighth grade algebra. The state isn’t clear on that yet. Is it considered a high school class or an eighth grade class? You cannot pick out 25 students and say ‘we are going to do this.’ It is either the whole grade level or none,” Sherwood said. “We are waiting for input from the state on how to handle that.”
“Like everything, it changes day by day. We’ll keep plugging away and have it ready to go by Friday,” Sherwood said.
Board president Tate Satern asked if students would be required to be working online within a certain time frame each day to communicate with a teacher.
“Teachers will put out assignments at the beginning of the week and will hold online office hours to allow students to get ahold of their teacher if they have questions,” Sherwood said.
“The initial thought is we will post assignments on Monday. There will be an instruction component, a work component and an interaction component,” Wickett said. “If a student is struggling with something, on Thursday and Friday a teacher will have a total of two hours where they are available by the Zoom Internet chat link. There is always email as well and other ways of communication.”
“We talked about trying to conduct classes live through Zoom, but technologically that would not be as good. Zoom is not set up that way,” Wickett said. “If they are video taping themselves doing something or posting videos that refer to their learning, that is the idea behind it.”
“We are trying to standardize it as best as we can so students, parents and teachers all know what to expect and it’s all going on Google classroom and structure will be similar,” Wickett said. “It will be user-friendly. More details will come out this week.”
In response to a question from Satern on students who are now working during the day, Wickett said the idea of requiring students to be in front of their computer at a certain time during the day would not be feasible.
“Kids are asked to be doing a lot more right now. They might be home watching younger siblings while the parents are gone working. Their schedules aren’t going to line up with the schedule they would have during a normal school day,” Wickett said. “We need to put out a message at the end of this week that is very clear on what we are doing, so kids will participate even when it is not required.”
Sherwood said plans are being worked out to allow students to get their computers from the school if they didn’t have them in their possession when the shutdown began. He also added details need to be worked out so students can have access to Internet hotspots in the community to access their online work with the school.
If Internet is not an option, efforts would be made to get paper packets to students to complete their work.
“We are going to get very straight forward directions out to parents later this week so they understand this will be required work,” Sherwood said. “Within the same home you may have three students who all need the same Internet access to the school so it can be a challenge trying to adjust their schedule in the home to meet any type of required classroom time if we did it that way.”
“I want to commend all the administration and teachers for thinking out of the box here to try and bring this together,” board member Kathy Yoakam said.
“A very special thank you to Mr. Sherwood. Your work has been exceptional,” Satern said. “We’re very glad to have you here.”