I don’t know about you all but I’m ready to get our lives back to normal, but will normal ever be the same? At Vega ISD, we don’t have the luxury to wait on normal. We are putting together plans to return to school, one way or another. TEA has not given us much guidance thus far on how returning in person will look. They have given us some guidance on how distance learning needs to look this fall and it will be a whole lot different than what we put out in the spring.
In-person education, I would prefer all of our students and staff to be back in the building. In my opinion, it is as much for their social well-being as it is for their education. We have been deep cleaning this building for 4 months now. It is as clean as it has probably ever been. We have been in the process of stockpiling cleaning and disinfectant supplies, hand soap and towels, hand sanitizer, masks, and gloves if needed. If we are back in person, we will do everything we can to make sure our students and staff are as safe as we can make it. I can only speak for some of my staff, but the ones that I have talked to are ready to get back with our kids.
Online education, as I said above TEA has a whole different view of how online learning will look this fall. They have two options, synchronous which will be a live education setting. The student will log on and go through a live lesson with the teacher and class. There will be a daily schedule (as being in person) and the student will follow that schedule daily. The second option is asynchronous, which will be a self-paced option. We will put out the curriculum and the student will work at it on his/her own time. Both of these options will be a whole lot more rigorous than what we put out in the spring. Grades will be taken, and attendance will be verified every day.
As a district, we are still contemplating which online option(s) to use and how to administer those options. In a perfect world, all of our students are back at school sitting in their desks, but we have to make plans on how we will handle students that aren’t coming back or students that are home sick for a period of time.
I know this is redundant, but I want you all to understand. The online education that will be administered will be a WHOLE lot different than it was in the spring. I know we had complaints in the spring about the difficulty of the curriculum, the rigor of the upcoming curriculum will be multiplied 10-fold, and reporting and assessing will be more stringent.
I hate that this sounds so negative, but it is the world we live in at the moment. We would prefer to have every student back in the classroom this whole school year because it would be the easiest option for students, parents, and staff. We will be sending out a survey and this survey will help us plan for all possible scenarios for 20-21 (well, as we’ve seen so far in 2020 I don’t know how you can plan for the craziness that we have all endured). If you could please fill out this survey, the link will be on Facebook, website, and district news and alerts.
Thank you,
Jody Johnson
