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Parents and guardians across California have been dealt the responsibility of juggling work and homeschooling their kids since schools closed in early March to combat the coronavirus. While most Bay Area schools expected to reopen in early April, most have extended the closure to May 4 in compliance with the state and nationwide call to extend shelter in place orders.
Now, school officials statewide are preparing for the reality that their students may not see the inside of a campus classroom for the duration of the 2019-2020 school year.
On Tuesday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Tony Thurmond—State Superintendent of Public Instruction—told county officials that this is due to safety concerns and ongoing social distancing, and that teachers should expect to put their efforts into continuing distance learning.
The memo—which is being described not as a directive, but as an acknowledgment—was what school districts across the state were anticipating before making the difficult decision to close.
Troy Flint, spokesperson for the California School Boards Association, spoke with KCBS Radio on Tuesday and said that while he doesn’t want to get ahead of an official announcement from Thurmond, the districts and school offices the association represents have been making contingency plans to prepare.
This new reality of distance learning on a massive scale has created obstacles for teachers, parents and students alike.
Flint said that there are several different layers of difficulties that are being experienced across the board with home schooling, with the most obvious being technical.
School officials have been grappling with ensuring that students not only have adequate broadband service in their home, but that they also have the right devices needed for instruction.
Flint also said that not every district has been able to train all teachers to make the transition to online learning, but that it is working on getting everybody up to speed.
“The physical presence and personal touch of instruction in the classroom is a big part of a teacher’s success,” he said. “And we have a lot of great teachers in the state, but not all of them have necessarily had the training to transition.”
Flint said that the absence of onsite instruction has shown that schools are overburdened and deserve more investment, support and prioritization than they are currently getting.
“What this crisis is showing is that schools are more than just learning centers and students are not just automatons,” he said. “Schools are really community hubs.”
When asked how makeup days will happen, Flint said, “we absolutely don’t know,” but that this brings up issues of equity.
“Every kid is suffering from a learning deficit compared to what they would normally receive in the classroom,” he said. “That’s especially profound for low-income students, students in rural areas who are suffering from a technology gap or maybe don’t have as many resources in the home.”
Flint did explain that some options are being explored to make up for the “brain drain” that’s happening right now, with officials considering summer school, an early school year start or extended days.