New school year begins as the spring term ended with distance learning
It is obvious that the start of the school year this month is like no other. Teary-eyed parents were not dropping off their young children for their first day of kindergarten nor were expectant freshmen stepping on a high school campus for the first time.
Last spring’s shutdown of school with the onset of the pandemic caused shelter-in-place orders, was thought to be a unique circumstance that would just be a memory by the time the 2020-21 fall term came around. Well, so much for those thoughts.
As soon as health statistics took a turn for the worse at the beginning of summer, school officials around the country began exploring how to educate students in this new reality. The Mt. Diablo Unified School District issued its first Roadmap to Reopen draft in June with three options for fall instruction from full-time on campus instruction to a hybrid virtual learning and on-campus experience.
A month later, Governor Gavin Newsom made the choice simple when he ordered a continued shutdown of school campuses and distance learning for counties with high rates of coronavirus infections, which includes the entire Bay Area and over half the state’s 58 counties.
Complete distance learning
Newly appointed MDUSD superintendent Dr. Adam Clark participated in his first board meeting virtually on July 13 when the decision to have a complete distance learning format was all but ratified. In subsequent weeks it was decided to move the first day of school to Aug. 17.
School site administrators and teachers from schools throughout the area have been very active on social media with information and motivational notices to families and the community as the beginning of school approached and instruction began.
Surveys of thousands of MDUSD parents had earlier indicated a strong desire for on campus learning after many less than satisfactory results during the virtual learning experience from March to June.
All schools have that experience to draw upon moving forward but that situation beginning last March arose after teachers and students had been together for seven months. This time, the vast majority of students will be getting instruction from teachers they have never met in person for subjects they are introduced to for the first time.
Lessons learned by schools last spring will hopefully provide some better solutions this fall. A continuing issue of hardware and technological challenges such as internet service facing many families and the fact that parents who are now able to go to work out of the home have an additional problem of not being on hand to monitor the virtual learning of their children are matters both the public school district and private schools are trying to solve.
The 44-page MDUSD Reopening Plan outlined key requirements as: Access to devices and connectivity for all students, daily live interaction with teachers and other students, challenging assignments equivalent to in-person classes and adapted lessons for English language learners and special education students.
It has been rumored that groups of parents are creating their own homeschooling co-op pods, which may reduce enrollment at schools and thus create even additional economic challenges for schools.
School Meals Program Changes
Starting this Monday, school meal services will be served at cost, reduced cost or free according to student eligibility. The district is no longer able to provide free meals to the broader community as it did for the past several months because the USDA did not extend an Area Eligibility Waiver for school districts in the 2020-2021 school year.
Meals served at 12 Meal Service Centers now require student verification to receive meals through the School Breakfast, National School Lunch and After School Snack Programs. The sites include six in Concord at Mt. Diablo and Ygnacio Valley high schools, Pine Hollow and El Dorado middle and Meadow homes and Cambridge elementary schools.
New Principals named
A number of new MDUSD principals have been announced this summer.
Kelly Cooper is now in charge at Northgate High and Jasmine Montgomery is the new Oak Grove Middle School principal.
Three Concord and one Clayton elementary schools have new principals: Woodside (Joseph Alvarez), Sun Terrace (Ronald Little), Mt. Diablo (Katie Sanchez) and Silverwood (Keya Nesbeth).
MDUSD Board Candidates
The filing period for the two vacant MDUSD governing board seats in the Nov. 3 election has closed with six candidates:
Area 3 (Ygnacio Valley feeder area): William Noonan, Keisha Nzewi, Michael Schneider and Dennis Chow.
Area 5 (Concord High area): Erin McFerrin and Carol Trost.