Carroll County Public Schools administrators found out at the same time as the rest of the state that Maryland public schools would remain closed to in-person learning until at least May 15 due to the coronavirus.
State Superintendent Karen Salmon made the announcement Friday afternoon during a news conference, noting, “I feel that this is one of those decisions that we need to make incrementally to see where we are in another month.”
CCPS Superintendent Steve Lockard said weekly calls with Salmon have focused on continuity of learning and meal distribution, and CCPS did not know ahead of time whether the state would extend closures for a few more weeks or close for the remainder of the school year, as some neighboring states have done. After the announcement, Lockard said, “We are kind of right where we’ve been.”
As of Friday afternoon, CCPS had not finished making decisions about the fourth quarter, but Lockard said he expects to communicate with families the following week. They are getting input from the leaders at individual schools and the public at large.
There will likely be another virtual meeting with the Board of Education and Central Office staff to give updates before the regularly scheduled May meeting, he said.
CCPS has been distance learning with its nearly 25,000 pupils since March 30. Schools closed to in-person learning starting Monday, March 13.
Distance learning takes place virtually through Google Classrooms — where teachers distribute assignments and learning resources — and through paper and pencil workbooks and subject-specific packets for families with less internet access. Teachers have two “office hours” each day during which they are to communicate with students via email, phone or web.
The effects of the closure will not disappear when students eventually return to school. “For the foreseeable future,” Lockard said, the question on educators’ minds is going to be how to recover from this period.
While Lockard praised CCPS’s distance learning efforts, “It’s never going to replace traditional opportunities where students are coming into our buildings every day and getting that direct support,” he said.
Last week, Salmon talked about ways she is encouraging increased online and distance-learning capabilities in case schools must remain closed into the 2020-21 academic year.
“With regards to the remainder of the school year and the summer, we will use this time to examine every option, and continue to develop a long-term plan for recovery,” she said. “In a very short timeframe, school systems have continued to increase their digital presence and capabilities to provide learning opportunities to all students.”
Going in phases
CCPS Chief Academic, Equity and Accountability Officer Jason Anderson discussed in an interview what the school system has done and is planning as they get more guidance from the state.
Along with all other school systems, CCPS must submit a continuity of learning plan to the state, and it’s a document that’s iterative and evolving. Information is available at carrollk12.org in an FAQ and under the section titled “CCPS Learning Resources.”
While CCPS staff is reliant on the state for when students might return to buildings, they don’t want to wait to plan. He separates distance learning into three phases.
The first, which has mostly finished, was about putting together the initial continuity of learning plan and making sure they had all the needed components. He summed it up as “Getting everything we could to those we serve,” and it mostly wrapped up about a week ago.
They focused on getting tools to students, including work books, paper packets, laptops and access to Google Classrooms. As of Jan. 2, there were three Google Classrooms created in CCPS. Today there are nearly 26,000 and teachers are encouraged to create one for each class of each subject.
CCPS is now in phase two. Anderson said they are focused on continuing to be responsive and drilling down into questions about specific issues that need to be addressed.
A big piece is teaching better ways to use the tools they have, “building the professional capacity of our teachers and quite honestly our students,” he said. One example is webinars the Instructional Technology Team is holding multiple times a day that teachers can drop in on to learn more about Google classroom and the types of software that can pair with it. The lessons are recorded so teachers can go back to them.
They’re also highlighting teachers doing good things within CCPS. Anderson called it “teachers building other teachers” as a way to help everyone feel “more enticed and more incentivized to go use those tools, also.”
CCPS has taken some steps into phase three, but most of it is developmental and unspecific. It focuses on recovering lost learning.
'We know that there’s going to be, when this is all said and done, students who are going to have some potential holes in their learning," he said.
There are many options and a lot depends on when in-school learning will be safe again.
One option is summer school, “for lack of a better term,” Anderson said. “We’re just exploring and right now it’s just a discussion.” It’s too early to say whether that would be mandatory for some or all students, because it’s too early to know whether students could gather in-person in the summer.
CCPS has an extended school year program for special education students that could be used as a model to expand to more subjects and the general education population.
When students return to school, after-school or Saturday programs could be ways to fill in concepts and skills. At the curriculum level, options might include “compacting” or special modules. This means that curriculum writers could use pretests from students to figure out what concepts are missing and write curriculum for teachers that works on catching up on missed prerequisites.
As they plan, they’re looking at feedback to make adjustments and looking at data on the engagement online and the way students are actually completing assignments.
Salmon said Friday that school systems are starting to “develop plans for additional digital learning and the recovery of any lost instructional time in the form of planning expanded summer school programs. State and local school officials are preparing for a number of scenarios depending on when our educators and students would be able to re enter school buildings.”
Recognizing milestones
Questions still remain about graduation and other ceremonies that honor students’ milestones in school.
The decision about how to move forward is in the hands of each county superintendent, but Lockard said a lot depends on what the state looks like going forward and how long Maryland remains under the stay-at-home order and limits on the number of people at gatherings.
“Graduation is still something on everyone’s mind. It’s on mine," he said. “It’s sad that that opportunity has been taken from us all. It’s just a big part of the fabric of schooling.”
Director of High Schools Eric King is working with principals to gather a group of seniors to weigh in on decisions about ways to honor graduation.
“We want to make sure they’re provided an opportunity for input and suggestions,” Lockard said.
Salmon took a moment during the news conference to recognize the anxiety that this uncertainty caused for seniors. “We want seniors and their families to have an opportunity to recognize their wonderful accomplishments from their time in high school and receive their diplomas,” she said.
President of the largest statewide teachers’ union, the Maryland State Education Association, Cheryl Bost said in a statement that the extension was the right decision for safety’s sake, though she hopes that it may be safe to reunite teachers and students in school before the school year is over.
“We know that this type of learning is no substitute for in-person learning, and we will need to be thoughtful and serious about how we help students recover from this crisis. Recent weeks have magnified existing inequities — whether of technology access, food security, or otherwise — that our students face every day and that challenge their ability to succeed in school. We must come together to address these issues over the short- and long-term.”