How Sacramento schools will try to improve online learning in 2020-21

Now that schools in Sacramento will officially start the 2020-21 school year with online instruction, parents and teachers are left wondering if distance learning will be easier the second time around.

After schools were abruptly closed in the spring, parents across California struggled with scheduling, spotty internet service, and placing their elementary school-aged children in front of Google Chromebooks and hours of live Zoom sessions. All while many of those parents also tried to juggle jobs and other duties of their own.

In Sacramento County, school officials and teachers say it could be smoother in the fall than it was in April and May. Schools have plans for more live instruction, one-on-one assistance and additional support for the county’s most vulnerable students

When the Sacramento County Office of Education, along with public health officials, announced on Wednesday that schools will remain physically closed, it allowed schools to mobilize earlier.

Sacramento City Unified Chief Academic Officer Christine Baeta presented a detailed plan of the district’s distance learning education at Thursday night’s school board meeting. Among the highlights: parents can expect more structured scheduling and more means of engagement.

Principals, for example, will drop into Zoom sessions the way they normally visit classrooms, providing teachers with specific feedback to raise standards of access.

“This is the opportunity to do things differently, whether it’s the notion of defining engagement differently or disrupting the status quo in the right way,” said Vincent Harris, the district’s Chief of Continuous Improvement and Accountability.

Teachers will focus on the depth of content being taught, rather than just getting through content at a defined pace. Students can receive extra time with teachers, including one-on-one sessions to help meet their needs.

Baeta stressed that the district cannot waste time.

“We need to come out better at the end of this pandemic,” she said.

Baeta said parents should hold school officials accountable to ensure their children’s needs are met.

Erica Chan, whose daughter will be attending fourth grade in the district, said she wants consistent live instruction, along with pre-recorded instructions on how to complete assignments, as her daughter benefited from this in the spring. Chan also hopes to have art or music integrated into the curriculum.

“Kids have different learning styles,” Chan said. “My daughter retains a lot of knowledge through music. When a math concept is put to song, she memorizes the song and can refer back to it when she is working on her math assignments.”

Screen time with teachers is important, Chan said, because her daughter is in a Mandarin Immersion program. The program is split evenly between English and Mandarin. In the spring, Zoom sessions in Mandarin were limited. Her daughter would submit videos, take part in group tutoring and complete assigned essays. Chan said doing that instruction even three times a week would be beneficial.

How will teachers, students connect?

Lori Jablonski, a government and geography teacher at C.K. McClatchy High School in Sacramento, said she is considering making individual phone calls with each of her approximately 160 students, as well as other ideas to connect with students. She says worrying about how best to serve students “makes it hard to sleep at night.”

Jablonski and a group of teachers submitted a list of issues they wanted the district to consider in ongoing conversations with the teachers’ union: internet access for students and teachers, online textbooks and a plan for how school supplies would be delivered to students who cannot pick them up.

“The teachers are eager to start planning. We want (online learning) to work much better than the way it worked in the springtime. We really want this to serve our students in the meantime,” Jablonski said.

She also stressed the importance of connecting with students who never logged on when classes went online in the spring.

“We know there were hundreds who never got connected,” Jablonski said. “And now is the time to be figuring out why, who they are, where they are. We lost kids. And that’s another thing that keeps me up at night.”

Other school districts, including Twin Rivers Unified, know that in order for distance learning to be successful this year, internet connectivity must be a key priority.

Twin Rivers Unified has two electric buses outfitted with Wi-Fi that will help students within an 84-foot radius have better internet access. The district also secured a contract with Verizon that provides Wi-Fi for families at $10 per month for a three-month commitment.

“That is half the cost of what everyone else is offering,” said Twin Rivers Unified Chief Business Officer Kristen Coates. “Our board has really supported the innovation.”

Coates said the district is working on creative ways to help students widen their access to curriculum. Students will also have access to special math curriculum and videos to help mitigate any learning loss they experience.

“Twin Rivers has been very proactive years before COVID-19,” Coates said. “We were able to pivot really quickly with technology. But I would be remiss to say that it was easy. All districts had difficulty securing Wi-Fi hotspots or Chromebooks, even when we had large inventory.”

Twin Rivers Unified distributed more than 17,000 Chromebooks and nearly 2,000 hotspots.

Students can put in a request, and drop off damaged items in exchange for new ones at Grant Union High School and Highlands High School Monday through Friday between 9:30 a.m. and 4 p.m.

This story was originally published July 17, 2020 at 3:51 PM.