Planning for Fall: Update #4

Community Update

August 3, 2020

To all South Bend Parents, Students, and Community Members-

This last week Pacific County superintendents received an advisement from Dr. Krager of the Pacific County Health Department.  In this letter he states:  

"We all want our children to go back to school, as the benefits for students and families are obvious. However, with the current disease burden in Pacific County we recommend that school districts in the county start the school year with distance learning and then re-evaluate the conditions monthly."  

Over the last two weeks many school districts across the state announced they will begin the school year remotely due to COVID-19, and more districts continue to announce these intentions.  Due to Dr. Krager's recommendation, we believe our safest option at this point is to start September with remote learning, which will be considered by our Board next week.  

Our principals continue to work with teachers and staff in planning for remote learning, and we will have detailed plans to release to parents toward the end of this week or early next.  Much of our planning stems from lessons learned this past Spring, and include:

1. Structured daily and weekly schedules with students having the opportunity to see their teachers each day; 

2.  A standardized Google Classroom for each grade;

3.  Live teacher instruction that will be recorded and also available for students and parents outside of normal school hours;  

4.  Live help sessions for extra student support.

5.  Provision of special education services.   

In addition, daily student attendance will be taken and typical class expectations will be followed. The elementary grades will focus on reading, writing, and math with other subjects integrated appropriately.  We are looking at a model where the junior/senior high will be focusing on just three subjects per day, rather than six, allowing for a more focused learning approach and faster earning of credits.

Another component we are looking at is a student/teacher conference (in person) the first one to two weeks of school, where students and parents will have the opportunity to meet their teachers, receive technology and materials, and get a feel for what will be expected.  

Our goal and intent is to seamlessly transition from the remote model to our onsite face-to-face model when we are able.  As such, we are also planning our on campus model so that we can return as soon as we can safely do so.  More information on returning face-to-face is forthcoming.

I want to thank our parents, students, staff and community for continued patience.  We are working as hard as we can and continue to adapt to very fluid circumstances.  If you have any questions, please feel free to call me at 875.6041 or email at jtienhaa@southbendschools.org.

Sincerely,

Jon Tienhaara
Superintendent