Following a state mandate, administrative personnel at Chatham County Schools have begun working on a plan to approach remote learning in the fall if campuses are still closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
And while a skeleton of the plan is in place, officials said there are still a lot of unanswered questions.
“This is not at all a finished product,” Amanda Hartness, CCS’ assistant superintendent for academic services and instructional support, said at Monday’s meeting of the Chatham County Board of Education. “It will need to continue to be a document that evolves. This document may change over time, even after submitted to the state.”
The draft plan — the final version of which will need to be submitted to the state Dept. of Public Instruction by July 20 — provides preliminary answers to questions about a number of topics, including training teachers on remote instruction resources, gathering information on student and teacher connectivity to the internet and available childcare options.
The document also begins to outline what expectations the district will have for students and teachers should remote learning continue into the fall.
Some expectations like attendance are not defined yet, but rough outlines are provided for how many lessons teachers should provide to students per week (a minimum of three for K-8,), an average length of time assignments should engage students (15-30 minutes for K-8, 30 minutes for 9-12) and what a “whole-class ‘live’ meeting” would look like for high school students.
Hartness said the district has begun surveying students, families and staff about remote learning during the spring and that most of the feedback had been positive. Survey results so far, she said, showed 75 percent of parents and 70 percent of students who responded were “satisfied” with how things went, and 94 percent of staff felt prepared to offer remote learning in the fall if needed.
The district will continue to gather more information and make changes and additions to the plan as needed. Superintendent Derrick Jordan said more changes will come, particularly as DPI and local and state health officials provide additional guidance for moving forward.
“There are still so many unknowns,” Jordan said. “What we know is that we are going to have to rely on the experts to provide information, and we have to have time to digest it, engage with folks, work with our local public health officials. But I do think there are going to be some big rocks that we may or may not be able to move as quickly as I or anybody else want to see them moved.”
Reporter Zachary Horner can be reached at zhorner@chathamnr.com or on Twitter at @ZachHornerCNR.