Washington School Board discuss successes, considerations of virtual semester

WASHINGTON - Washington School District principals and staff discussed the transition and completion of online learning for the semester during the school board meeting on Wednesday.

Lincoln Elementary Principal Teresa Beenblossom, High School Principal Erik Buchholz and Special Education Director Samantha Brinning discussed with the board positives and consideration that took place during the semester after having to transition to online learning during the coronavirus pandemic.

Beenblossom spoke for Pre-K to 8th grade who had voluntary participation with their students. Beenblossom said the teachers gave their full effort socially, emotionally and academically during the time and stepped up to learn the different programs.

The teachers did video lesson each week and beyond that held office hours and spend time socially connecting with the students.

'Our teachers did Google Hangouts where they just played games with the kids where they just connected with the kids,” Beenblossom said.

It was difficult for both the lower and upper level grades to know who had access to proper internet. Because the lower grades were voluntary Beenblossom said it was difficult to know who was engaged in the activities unless they turned an assignment in or were a participant in a zoom meeting.

9th through 12th grade had required learning this year and Buchholz said there was a lot of work up front to plan but overall there was a high percentage of participation.

Buchholz said teachers were challenged with trying to be flexible and leniency and consider how much school work they gave on a daily and weekly basis. No deadlines were attached to homework assignments and at the end of the semester the teachers had a large amount of homework turned in the last week.

To assess the engagement, the school took the number of classes freshman through juniors took and how many of the classes they passed and used it as an engagement number. Freshman had a 70 percent engagement, sophomores had a 76 percent and juniors had 83 percent, averaging 76 percent.

'76 percent would not be acceptable if we were in a regular class,” Buchholz said. 'We actually felt pretty good about that.”

Teachers from other districts who were voluntary said Washington was 'miles ahead” of where they were at, Buchholz said.

The ability to be able to record lessons was a positive to Buchholz. He said one student became the sole income for his family and 7:30 p.m. was the first time he was able to start working on his lessons. Not only was he able to watch the recorded lessons, his math teacher held office hours at night to allow him and other students to ask questions.

Some considerations Beenblossom said was it was difficult to communicate with students and staff because of the lack of face-to-face.

'You either had to send an email or you had to do something through zoom rather than stopping into the office when you can,” Beenblossom said.

Buchholz said they had the highest amount of collaboration between staff members.

'It was a daily constant visit of ‘what's working for you, what's not working for you, what have you tried, what haven't you tried,'” Buchholz said.

Communication between students and staff in the high school was also higher than it would be during a regular school year, Buchholz said.

A challenge both Beenblossom and Buchholz said was support staff didn't have a lot of opportunities to engage and Buchholz said para-support was not used as well as they could have been.

Brinning spoke about how the special education staff worked with the student's needs during the altered semester. Brinning said the special education teachers worked really hard to meet the student's needs.

'Sometimes they were meeting with families at night, doing face to face sessions with families after those school hours if that's what worked best,” Brinning said.

The teachers were creative on how the students participated, some participated in online programs, some did face-to-face Zoom sessions and some preferred paper packets.

Brinning said the communication with families was one of the biggest positives. All special education teachers were required to communicate with families two times a week and the response was overwhelmingly positive.

'I had a lot of families share with me ‘I know more about what my kids doing in school than when they were in school,'” Brinning said.

Brinning hopes to carry that communication into the next year virtually or face-to-face.

All Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings for the special education students were done virtually. Only five IEP meetings were unable to be completed before the end of June.

Curriculum Director Veta Thode announced greatest number of English Language Learners (ELL) students exit the program based on scores. Two weeks before the school closed the students took the ELPA21 and 30 students exited the program.

In the 2017-18 school year six students exited and in the 2018-19 school year 13 students exited. Thode said the purchase of National Geographic Reach this year was cited by the teachers for the success.

During the meeting, Superintendent Willie Stone said the school lunch program served 38,940 meals in the community so far. The program is continuing through July and Stone expects it will serve over 50,000 meals in total.

The next board meeting will be July 8 virtually at 7 p.m.