LONG BEACH PENINSULA — With the upcoming school year kicking off in just 20 days, Ocean Beach School District staff and teachers are mounting a Herculean effort to make sure students and parents are prepared for what’s to come.

Following the OBSD Board of Directors decision on Aug. 10 to start the 2020-21 school year remotely, the next phase of what’s been a hectic summer for the district began almost immediately: reaching out to students and parents about the change and what they should expect come Sept. 8, the first day of school.

Superintendent Amy Huntley held an hour-long virtual Q&A session with parents on Aug. 12. About 120 people tuned into the Zoom meeting, with Huntley fielding dozens of questions or comments about the district’s plan from concerned or confused parents.

Getting ready

OBSD will begin reaching out to families to schedule an appointment prior to the first day of school, Huntley said. The appointment will serve multiple purposes: allow families to collect school-issued Chromebooks for each of the students in the household, ensure students can log into the device successfully, and fill out typical back-to-school paperwork. Huntley clarified that each student will receive their own Chromebook for the school year, a first for the district.

Parent-teacher conferences will still be held, and will take place during the opening week of school. The conferences, Huntley said, allows parents to meet the teacher and address any concerns they may have. For K-2 students, the conferences will include technical support to help train parents and students.

Pull Quote

‘Nobody wants kids on a screen for six hours a day.’

Amy Huntley

OBSD superintendent

Students should know who their teacher is by the first week of September at the latest, Huntley said, and hopefully earlier. Schedules for Ilwaco High School students are being crafted by district staff right now, and the district plans to reach out to IHS families to set up a Zoom or phone scheduling appointment.

While the school year will start remotely, the same way it finished last school year, Huntley said OBSD has worked hard over the summer to address concerns parents had about the effectiveness and quality of the remote model when it quickly went into effect last spring in an emergency manner.

“[The state] knew we were taking an in-person system and shoving it out there [last spring]. That wasn’t easy. This year, we’re designing it for the fact that we’re going to have this problem, so it should look very different than it did last spring,” Huntley said.

This year, each student in the district will be assigned a homeroom teacher who will also act as a case manager to track their students’ progress and make sure they’re staying engaged with their schoolwork. If teachers see a student is struggling, they are supposed to reach out to parents to help address the concerns.

What to expect

While students are being asked to be much more engaged than they were in the spring, Huntley stressed that it is not OBSD’s intent for students to be in front of a screen all day long. There will be non-virtual assignments for students to work on, some of which will also be given to families to take home during the initial appointment before the school year begins.

“Nobody wants kids on a screen for six hours a day,” Huntley said.

Regardless of whether OBSD is in the remote or hybrid model, each classroom will have a daily Zoom session each morning that students are recommended to attend. The intent of the virtual meeting is to lay out what students are supposed to be working on each day and allow students to interact with classmates if they’re not physically in the classroom.

There will be consistency throughout the district in how students are learning remotely. K-2 students will use the online learning platform SeeSaw, while grades 3-12 will use Google Classroom. Google Classroom operates much in the same manner as Canvas and other college-level online platforms, where students can be assigned and turn in homework, watch videos and participate in class discussions.

At the high school level, students will have between 4-5 classes, and will have work every day for those classes. Huntley compared IHS’ approach to its schedule akin to that of a community college, where some classes are completely or mostly in-person, while others are done completely online.

“Each kid has their own individual schedule, so depending on the classes the student takes … they may have an in-person shop class, but their English class may be always online,” Huntley said.

If and when the district is able to transition into the hybrid model, the plan is for IHS band and choir classes to be held outside at the football stadium, to allow for necessary distancing. At Hilltop Middle School, band and choir lessons will be done remotely. Other electives for K-8 students, such as art, will also be incorporated into homeroom lessons.

Transitioning

The earliest OBSD will move from its remote model to its hybrid model is Monday, Sept. 21. The decision on whether to do so will be made on the previous Wednesday, Sept. 16, to allow parents five days to prepare for the transition.

If and when OBSD moves to its hybrid model, students will be on-campus two days a week, while learning remotely the other three days. Start and end times to the school day will be shortened to the minimum time allowed, Huntley said.

The days a student will be learning in-person, either Monday and Tuesday or Thursday and Friday, will be determined by bus route. By doing so, Huntley said, it ensures that students living in the same household will be at school on the same days of the week.

For students who ride the bus, the busing operations should stay relatively normal, Huntley said. Masks will obviously be required while on the bus, and students will need to follow an assigned seating chart to ensure they remain properly distanced.

In the hybrid model, students will eat in their classroom and at their desks in order to remain distanced. Along with recess, where students will still need to wear masks, Huntley said the district plans to incorporate “mask breaks” into the daily in-person schedule. During these breaks, students can go outside and spread out so they can take off their mask.

“We want them outside as much as we can get them. If we’re in-person, we have our raincoats and boots because we’re going to be out there whether it’s 40 miles per hour winds and raining sideways,” Huntley said.

Other options

For parents who aren’t comfortable with the district’s remote model, or aren’t comfortable sending their children back to school in-person once the metrics allow for it, OBSD is offering two alternative learning methods for the school year.

For parents that may be weary of sending their student back to campus this year, a year-long virtual academy that offers the same curriculum as Columbia Virtual Academy — a free, public and accredited program offered as an alternative to the traditional brick and mortar model in Washington state. While the curriculum is CVA’s, it will be taught by OBSD teachers. Students who opt for this program will still be issued a Chromebook, and in-person support will be offered for students with special needs.

More information about CVA can be found at https://www.cva.org.

For parents wanting to homeschool their students this year, the Homelink program is available to use. The program is set up for parents to provide the majority of the curriculum, but are also still able to opt into resources and tools used by OBSD. Teachers from the district can help develop plans and track progress, as well as provide some group lessons, if metrics allow.

With both the virtual academy and the homeschool program, Huntley said students who opt into either program will still be able to participate in extracurricular activities, such as sports, if the activities are able to take place at all. At IHS, Huntley said the school is looking into offering Esports — competitive video gaming — as a safe extracurricular activity.

Both the Raymond and South Bend school districts, the two biggest districts in the county after OBSD, have also decided to begin the year with remote learning. Naselle-Grays River Valley School District will begin the year in a hybrid model, with students in school two days a week, but superintendent Lisa Nelson said additional details and components of the plan are being finalized later this week. At Willapa Valley School District, K-5 students will be on-campus four days a week, while grades 6-12 will be learning remotely.