On August 7th, 2020, Principal Sandra Mackey and Assistant Principal Dina Clagg held a coffee chat meeting to answer some of the questions they’ve been hearing from the Cascadia parent community. This is a summary from notes taken by the PTA.
Land Acknowledgement – we are on the traditional lands of the Duwamish People.
Admin Team Introductions –
- Sandra Mackey – Principal. Wishes she could see us all in person.
- Dina Clagg – Assistant Principal. Came from Thornton Creek, former history teacher, former instructional coach, Mom of a 4th grader in Shoreline School District.
Principal Mackey acknowledged that our community is grieving.
Sandra Mackey’s core principals that guide her in her role as principal:
- What would I want for my own children
- What does educational research say
- What is district policy
Key Practices for Remote Learning – from SPS
We will collectively focus on a handful of key practices in remote learning:
- Offer consistent school schedules
- Actively monitor student engagement and create action plans to improve it
- Provide weekly communication to families/caregivers so they can support student learning
- Focus on priority standards (leveraging the provided curricular resources) to address unfinished learning
- Implement key strategies for remote instruction
- Create space for collaborative interdisciplinary planning time
- Organize Schoology/Seesaw classrooms consistently
IMPORTANT NOTE: the plans put forward by district staff have not yet been approved by the school board (they are meeting about the reopening Aug 12), and SPS is still negotiating with SEA, the teachers’ union – as a result, plans could change.
What Is Planned…
- The district will provide devices for every student. Grades K-2 will receive iPads, 3-5 will get laptops. Distribution is still to be determined, but will probably happen at Cascadia in late August. Consistency in devices will help with everyone having the same options from technology, like captioning on Teams.
- Food and support services will continue as they have in spring and summer.
- OSPI requires that attendance be taken. Student email addresses will be used for taking attendance, but the method/process has not been fully worked out.
- Instruction with be synchronous (live), with asynchronous (on-demand) choices and work time; the school day will mirror the traditional in-person day.
- The district is required by OSPI to provide 180 days of instruction.
- Teams will be the video conferencing platform.
- K-2 will use Seesaw as a Learning Management System. It is not clear if grades 3-5 will use Seesaw or have the choice to use Schoology.
- Teachers return to work Aug 27th, and SPS will provide on-going training for teachers on the use of technology and online learning.
- Negotiation with the teachers’ union may impact this schedule. Teachers are contracted to work a certain number of hours and days but how that day looks can be negotiated.
- SPS will provide families with tech support hotline building upon the volunteer tech support from last Spring.
- Continuous Learning Plans will end. IEP teams will meet to review all current IEPs. The school will reach out to families at the beginning of the school year to schedule these meetings.
“Synchronous” means live; students and teachers interacting online at the same time. “Asynchronous” means activities that can be done or accessed any time. Fall will have much more synchronous learning than last spring.
Monday/Tuesday/Thursday/Friday Schedule – based on grades 1 – 3
- Daily check-in – 4×35 minutes – synchronous learning
- ELA (English Language Arts) – 4×50 minutes – synchronous learning
- Independent reading – 4×20 minutes – asynchronous learning
- Art or Music or PE or Library – 4×30 minutes – synchronous learning
- Science – 2×30 minutes – synchronous learning
- Social Studies – 2×30 minutes – synchronous learning
- Math – 4×50 minutes for grades 1-2, 4×45 minutes for grades 3-5 – synchronous learning
- Small group / family engagement – 4×85 minutes – synchronous learning. May include IEP meetings, discussions of how online learning is going, small group work, etc.
Wednesday Schedule – based on grades 1 – 3
- Daily check-in – 30 minutes – synchronous learning
- ELA – 50 minutes – synchronous learning
- Art or Music or PE or Library – 40 minutes – synchronous learning
- Small group / family engagement – 100 minutes – synchronous learning
What our teachers have to say (Principal Mackey met with them last week)
- Instruction
- Instruction should be consistent, predictable
- Team/collaboration
- Common Master Schedule will be important
- Teachers know that some families are forming pods, and would like to work with them
- staff roles (specialist)
- Clear feedback/assessment loop
- Special Ed Concerns
- Relationship building
- Equity
- Workload – teacher workload was extremely high in spring
- Technology (must be ADA compliant)
- Software (Seesaw, Clever, IXL, science experiments, FlipGrid, Khan Academy, Quizlet, Kahoot, typing club, Newsela, Adobe flash)
What parents had to say –
- Results of parent survey will be posted on the PTA website. They can’t be posted on the school website because of ADA compliance issues.
- Preference for printed materials sent home.
- Extracurricular activities were popular – book-club, Shakespeare.
- Increased communication from the PTA and the school will be important during this time.
Parent Questions – General
Q: How can we best support teachers and school leaders?
A: Stay flexible and have a growth mindset – we believe in and support our staff and this is a unique moment and opportunity in the lives of our children.
Parent Questions – Logistics
Q: If we un-enroll for the year from the school district, what happens next year?
A: Students maintain their HCC designation for one year outside the district. Families can opt into Cascadia on the school choice form. Please reach out to Principal Mackey to discuss how school can best support your family; she prefers to keep all students enrolled.
Q: What resources are available to students who attend school at Cascadia?
A: All the usual resources will be available. The school will provide workbooks to families. The school is checking to see if there are enough textbooks to pass out to families as well. There will be a school calendar. Staff will communicate in advance about things coming that week. In addition, the district will be providing 1 to 1 electronic devices for students to use – iPads for grades 1 – 2, and laptops for grades 3 – 5. The Shakespeare program for 5th graders will go forward online. There will be some remote lessons from our garden educator.
Q: What about school supplies
A: The school plans to buy school supplies in bulk for everyone as it has done in years past. Last year the cost for school supplies was $35. The cost and specifics for this year will be figured out in late August when teachers return. Support is available for those who need it.
Q: Will we get the whole curriculum for the year?
A: Because we will be receiving live instruction parents will not receive the curriculum for the whole year but that info is available on the OSPI website.
Q: When/how will we return to hybrid/partial in-person? What information does SPS use for making their decisions about the re-opening of schools?
A: SPS works with OSPI, the health dept., and King County
Q: What role will KidsCo have at the school? Will there be enrichment programs?
A: KidsCo will continue to provide day care to children of essential workers. A survey was sent to families to determine what families needed. If you didn’t receive it, please reach out to Principal Mackey. They may be able to run some enrichment programs if the community wants that.
Parent Questions – Training and Technology
Q: What training will teachers, students, and families receive to support remote instruction? Will students be taught online etiquette (chat feature, where to find things, communication)?
A: Principal Mackey and Assistant Principal Clagg have been reading voraciously about best practices in remote instruction. John Hattie’s meta-analysis of what’s effective in education was mentioned. Staff is working on transitioning from “crisis education” that happened in the spring, to true distance learning. Some training is planned for teachers when they return on August 27, but also the teachers’ union and the district are considering extra training days for staff. There will be materials posted on the district website to teach families how to use the necessary technology. Teachers will spend time teaching students how to use the necessary tools and technology, and kids pick up technology fast.
Parents Questions – Instruction
Q: What kind of interactive instruction will be provided? Will there be any fun?
A: Interactive instruction (live instruction) will be given in blocks. Instruction might look really different, for example using Flipgrid, or asking kids to produce videos. Yes there will be fun! Teachers have learned a lot about the technology, and have a lot more tools to make instruction more engaging and fun.
Teachers and students will use Clever – a one-stop login with multiple apps. More will be added to make it more robust. Teams will be the default meeting software; improvements in Teams are being made to accommodate needs such as control of the chat box and break out room meetings. The district made this choice because of the ability to have a safe environment. Using the student emails and logins will help keep this space safe for students.
Parent volunteers may help with online classes or small groups, similar to how parents sometimes helped in classrooms in the past.
Q: How will relationships be built in the online format for current and new families? And how will Cascadia help connect families beyond the school day?
A: The first week of school will be spent building relationships, creating the classroom culture, establishing classroom procedures, and showing kids how to do the things they need to do. There will be online community meetings, student council or other clubs, but they may look different than in the past. Parents can sign up for the PTA email list and directory and/or provide their contact information to the Room Parents. Specialists will be interacting with students, but the rotations may be longer to facilitate relationship building.
Parent Questions – Assessments
Q: Will school work still be considered optional?
A: Because the District is providing devices to students while we follow governmental and research-backed guidelines to open schools remotely, SPS is developing protocols around taking attendance using student login credentials, as well as using our digital platforms for instruction, student work submission, and the student work feedback loop. Students will be graded on both formative and summative assessments. While teachers understand that students may have gaps (unfinished learning from last spring) and will work to identify and address them, instruction will happen “on grade level” (meaning that teachers will not start a 3rd grade class with end of 2nd grade standards). For HC programs, the acceleration patterns will remain; for example, 3rd grade HC math classes will continue to instruct 5th grade curriculum (and will not backfill 4th grade standards). Teachers will have to scaffold on-grade level instruction and tasks for their students, and the District is also working on prioritizing our curriculum standards so that the most essential learning in each grade is emphasized across the district. A mastery-style approach will be used; students can improve and re-submit work. We will use multi-modal ways of looking at ideas. There will be 3 progress reports during the year, and parent-teacher conferences.
Q: What accountabilities will teachers have to provide quality education?
A: Teachers continue to be evaluated with OSPI’s professional standards.
Closing
- A new edition of the school handbook is in the works including links and instructional videos on things like how to use Schoology or where to find report cards.
- A remote school handbook is also in development.
- There will be a school event August 31st. It will probably feature library book pick-up. It may be possible to pick up workbooks and electronic devices if they are ready at that time. Or it could be an online event.
- Update: There will be a library book pick up on August 31. Ms. Bodmer will provide video instruction to families via Youtube to teach the students how to check-out books. Once the video is ready an email will be send out to families. The link to the video will also be posted on the school and PTA websites. Families will then come to school on August 31 between 4 pm and 6 pm to pick up pre-checked books.
- School pictures will be provided off campus – Yuen Lui will take school pictures at their studio in the fall. More information to come.
- Expect a second community meeting before school starts but after the district has further solidified its plans. Feel free to email Principal Mackey in the meantime; she will try to write back ASAP but she gets a lot of email and may need time to research the answers to your questions.
Questions that were asked in chat during the meeting, that Principal Mackey answered for the PTA afterwards:
Q: When will we find out our teachers?
A: After the 27th when teachers return. Grades 1-3 will have one homeroom teacher, 4-5 will likely have dyads. Not all decisions will be made until after 8/27.
Q: Will classes be recorded for students who can not log-in? If not, how do we accommodate students who need to learn asynchronously?
A: It is unlikely that classes will be recorded due to FERPA and teacher contract limitations. The district is still grappling with the variation in how well students can engage on-line.
Q: How do we actually get feedback about what our kid is doing?
A: Staff is investigating using the grade-book function that has been available to highschool teachers.
Q: Are we having instrumental music?
A: Principal Mackey has gotten two different answers about this – both yes, and no. She has expressed that if we don’t get instrumental music the PTA will wish to withdraw the grant for this educator.