By VERNON ROBISON
The Progress
School Organizational Teams (SOTs) in Moapa Valley scrambled last week to come up with plans for starting the school year amid an array of complex COVID-19 restrictions.
These teams, which include school administrators, teachers, staff, parents and community members, spent multiple hours last week drafting alternatives to a restart plan proposed by Clark County School District (CCSD) administrators in Las Vegas on Thursday, June 25.
“We have heard from our parents who are very unhappy with the CCSD plan,” said Hal Mortensen who is principal of both Moapa Valley High School and Ute Perkins Elementary School in Moapa. “But because our rural schools are smaller than schools in the city, we feel like we can do more for our kids than that, while still adhering to the social distancing mandates from the CDC and the state. That is what we are working towards”
CCSD Central plan
The CCSD plan, presented on June 25, is set to come before the Board of Trustees for a final decision on Thursday, July 9.
The plan would have students attending school for face-to-face instruction only two days per week. The other three weekdays would be spent doing distance learning at home.
All grade levels would be divided into three cohorts. The first of these would attend live classes at school on Monday and Tuesday. The second would attend classes on Thursday and Friday. A third cohort would be offered to students wishing to opt out of face-to-face class time altogether and, instead, do distance learning full time.
The maximum capacity for the average CCSD classroom at any given time would be about 18 students, according to the plan.
Face coverings and 6-feet social distancing would be required for students, teachers and school staff.
Local reaction
The release of the CCSD plan set off a firestorm of parent frustration. Many parents insist that two days per week of live interaction with teachers in class is not enough.
Many remember the failure of “distance learning” employed during the final quarter of last school year and are doubtful about the effectiveness of distance learning being proposed for half of the week in the CCSD plan.
Interestingly, many parents are also adamantly opposed to requiring school children to wear face masks. For many this has become a non-negotiable.
“I think that may be the number one concern I am hearing from parents,” said Grant Bowler Elementary School SOT Chairwoman Erin Francom. “There are a lot who have said they simply will not send their kids back to school if they have to wear a mask.”
All of these elements together have caused many Moapa Valley parents to look for other options for the education of their children. Looking at various home-schooling options, parents have threatened to leave the CCSD once and for all.
SOT plans
With the real threat of this mass exodus at the top of mind, local school administrators and SOTs worked hard last week to develop alternatives that would satisfy parents, CCSD and state requirements.
The SOTs were given hope in this effort by a single, brief statement made at the June 25 Trustee meeting. In response to a parent inquiry about special considerations being made for smaller rural schools, CCSD Deputy Superintendent Brenda Larsen-Mitchell responded, “Looking at the health and safety of our students and our staff, we will have to look at that on a case by case basis.”
That opened the door for local principals and SOTs to start developing possible alternatives. The teams felt an urgency to submit their plans before the Trustee meeting on Thursday.
Coming up with an alternative for Ute Perkins Elementary was the quickest and easiest. Mortensen said that the student count at Perkins is already small enough that the school could go back to a full five-day week, all while meeting the required social distancing guidelines.
“We have just over 100 kids at the school, so with a little bit of rearranging things, we could just go back to school as normal,” Mortensen said.
At MVHS, an alternative plan is not quite as easy; but still possible, Mortensen said.
That plan would have all students return to school for a four-day week. The fifth day would be left open to allow for deep cleaning of the building.
The MVHS student body would be divided into three cohorts. Cohort A would receive live classroom instruction for two class periods in the morning between 7:15 and 10:05. During that time Cohort B would be engaged in distance learning. Supervised Learning Centers would be available on campus to assist in that process. After a staggered lunch period which would allow for classrooms to be sanitized, the cohorts would switch off for the rest of the school day.
Like the CCSD plan, a third cohort would be available to students who preferred to only do online learning from home.
Plans formulating at Mack Lyon Middle School were similar with a four-day school week. The students would also be divided into cohorts experiencing similar periods of live classroom instruction for core subjects, alternated with distance education in supervised learning centers for subjects like health, computers and other electives.
Creating an alternative plan for Grant Bowler Elementary presented the greatest challenge. With a school population of 670, similar in size to urban elementary schools, the Bowler facility is simply not big enough to accommodate all of the students in a daily session, while allowing for social distancing.
But the Bowler SOT, spent four separate meetings last week looking at outside-the-box possibilities.
One of these was drafted by Bowler teacher Kim Mills. It would divide the school into morning and afternoon cohorts. Each cohort would come to school for a half day, four days per week. A brief period during the lunch hour would allow for classrooms to be sanitized before the afternoon cohort came in.
The other half of daily instruction time would be done by distance learning at home.
The all distance learning component would also be offered for families not comfortable with sending their children to school.
By the clock, this plan offers roughly the same classroom instruction time as the CCSD proposal. But both parents and teachers in the SOT liked it better.
“I just feel better about seeing my students more often,” said Bowler fifth grade teacher Caroline Delafrance at a SOT meeting last week. “I think it is better than only two days of instruction and then I don’t see them for five days.”
Obstacles and Drawbacks
But there are problems and weaknesses to all of these plans.
At Bowler, one of the major obstacles is having adequate staffing. Bowler principal Shawna Jessen said that, in order to have enough teachers to carry out the half-day plan and remain in compliance with labor contracts, about a third of the students would have to opt out of live classroom learning and instead opt into the all-online option.
“I’d hate to have to tell my kids and parents that we have to winnow out a third of them to distance ed to make this work at all,” Jessen said.
In addition, the change in Bowler’s schedule would cause almost insurmountable problems with bus transportation, Jessen said. “We have only nine buses in the valley to serve all four schools,” Jessen said. “So it is a pretty delicately balanced schedule that is very hard to mess with.”
Finally, Jessen feared that the schedule might not allow enough time for sanitizing the classrooms each day between sessions.
“I want to explore every option if we can find a workable solution,” Jessen finally told her SOT in a meeting on Friday morning. “I want to help our parents feel more comfortable about this. But there still are a lot of obstacles here that we just can’t address. I’m hearing a lot of passion, but we still don’t have a workable plan.”
Acknowledging this, SOT members determined to, at least, submit to trustees a list of priorities and concepts that they would like to see incorporated into the final district plan next week.
“I know that is not ideal, but we owe it to parents to at least exhaust every option and submit our wishes to the district,” said Francom. “We don’t want to just not try.”
None of the local plans could get around parents’ strong concerns about requiring face coverings for students during school days. But principals pointed out that the mask policies were still not yet finalized.
Just how much of the school day that masks would be required, and whether younger children would have to wear the masks at all, were still undetermined, they said.
“There is a lot that is still uncertain and we have to remember that it is all a temporary plan to start with,” Mortensen said. “For now, let’s just get school open and then fight those battles when they come.”
Consequences of mass exodus
And what happens if local parents decide to pull their kids out of public school in large quantities?
Principals respond that it would simply decimate the staff and programs at their schools.
“The reality is for me that I get budgeted by the pupil,” said Jessen. “So if parents decide to take kids out of CCSD, we lose staff and teachers. That would basically up-end any plans that we are working so hard to make.”
Mortensen said that roughly each 30 students lost from enrollment would result in the loss of one teacher from the school staff.
“In a small school like ours, it is likely we don’t just lose a teacher, but we lose a program,” Mortensen said.
Which teacher is lost from a school often depends on who has least seniority in a department. For example, English and Theatre teacher Kenna Higgins joined the MVHS faculty just last year. She might be one of the first to go should the school have to cut a position.
Higgins said that she has been concerned to see so much parent dialog on social media threatening to pull kids out of the district.
“Of course, I want to stay teaching here at MVHS,” Higgins said. “But it is more than just about me. It is about great school programs like Theatre, Chorus, Orchestra and others that are in jeopardy here. Those things could be lost. And, chances are they won’t ever come back. That would be a shame.”
MVHS English/Media teacher Kim Hardy, who is also a member of the SOT agreed. “The idea of home-schooling is a great knee-jerk reaction for parents,” Hardy said. “But the schools give a lot to the culture of the community in so many ways. And decisions like that could decimate the schools here. So I think parents need to consider whether a decision to make a point to CCSD is worth that. At least, I’d hope they would contact CCSD and the Trustees to let them know how they are feeling first.”
Jessen also urged parents to carefully consider such impactful decisions. “I just hope my parents won’t make that decision too quickly, at least give us a chance,” she said. “We are still working on things. Let us try to make the best of what we are given. If it turns out to be terrible, then I guess they can do their thing.”
