‘Distance learning’ off to rocky start at Sacramento City Unified for students without laptops

On the first official day of “distance learning” for Sacramento City Unified, teacher Victoria Carr received emails from students asking when they’ll receive a Google Chromebook so they can begin their work online.

Some of Carr’s students at Fern Bacon Middle School were using borrowed phones from their parents and guardians to connect with their teachers and classmates on Monday.

Terrence Gladney, who serves on the SCUSD Bond Oversight Committee, said he’s fortunate his daughter has a laptop to use on the first day, otherwise “she would have had to write her paper on her smartphone.”

Some of the initial reports back on the first day demonstrated how distance learning is looking throughout the country, if not the world — stressful and imperfect.

“We will have a lot of challenges ahead of us,” Superintendent Jorge Aguilar said. “It shouldn’t mean we stop moving forward.”

In a media call Monday, Aguilar said the district distributed more than 12,000 computers to students. There are more than 40,000 students in the district, and officials estimate they need to distribute 19,000 more Chromebooks in the coming weeks to students in need.

But with shipment delays happening all across the state, many students are left waiting for their devices.

“We have never had the ability to go one-to-one with our student to technology ratio,” said board President Jessie Ryan. “In a global pandemic, alongside districts across the state, we are struggling to ensure that our orders are expedited.”

Ryan said she began her own day with her second-grade son signing in to see his classmates in an online Zoom session.

“We had a rich conversation about what distance learning was going to look like today and beyond for our kids,” she said. “At a few different points during the call, I choked up, because the reality was it was the first time my son was seeing his friends in many weeks. It was the first time he was having a conversation with his teacher, who is just one of the most compassionate, dedicated educators we have ever worked with.”

District officials stressed that the new distance learning model is a hybrid program, and can be carried out a number of ways: conference calls, textbooks, and assigning work to students that is not necessarily online.

District Chief Academic Officer Christine Baeta said it’s reasonable for parents to assume that all distance learning requires a computer, but that much of the first week will be spent with teachers checking in and establishing relationships with their students online — similar to the first day of school.

Teachers will check in on how many of their students have the technology, textbooks and other materials they need. And they are focusing on the social and emotional well being of students in a district where many students struggle with food and housing insecurities and chronic absenteeism.

But some teachers, along with the Sacramento City Teachers Association, said the hybrid plan can’t work if most students don’t have their textbooks and materials on hand.

Cease and desist letter about tech support

C.K. McClatchy High School teacher Lori Jablonski said that about a third of her students still had no access to devices. She can’t provide supplemental materials to her students because they’re unable to go back to campus, she said on a media call on Monday.

Teachers at McClatchy High created a mutual assistance program called SCTA Community Volunteer to help prepare for Monday’s distance learning launch. District-wide, more than 190 teachers offered to assist students and families with technology support — an offer met with an April 9 cease and desist letter from the district.

“Any district employee who provides technology support to district students as an ‘SCTA Community Volunteer’ does so without the district’s consent and such service is outside of the course and scope of their employment,” read the letter. “Such employees, and SCTA, will be solely responsible for any and all legal consequences arising from service as an ‘SCTA Community Volunteer.’ ”

Aguilar said the letter was not designed to provide a chilling effect. The letter explained that technology support was not part of the memorandum of understanding between the district and the teachers union.

“We have personnel that handles that support,” he said, adding that he encourages teachers to continue providing support to their own students.

Jablonski called the legal letter outrageous, adding that there could have been many ways for the district to clarify how they wanted to offer tech support.

“It could have said, ‘We would like to be the first call for tech support,’ ” she said. “What they did was send the letter saying liability will rest on the teachers who are providing it.”

This story was originally published April 14, 2020 at 5:00 AM.