After hesitating late last week, the governors of Vermont and New Hampshire have shut down their states’ pre-K through 12th-grade schools for at least three weeks as part of the effort to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.
The announcements, made Sunday afternoon, started a round of furious planning by educators across the Twin States, who will soon begin an experiment in “remote learning,” and providing meals to students who need them and services to special education students from a distance. School districts also are planning how to provide care for the children of critical health care workers who will be unable to stay home as the number of cases of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, continues to rise.
“This is a moment of service for all of us,” Vermont Gov. Phil Scott said in a news conference Monday morning.
While school buildings will be closed, school remains in session in both states, and students will be expected to complete assignments from home. In Vermont, school superintendents have been instructed to pay school staff, Scott said.
While New Hampshire’s school closure took immediate effect, Vermont schools can remain open through Tuesday to make plans and to provide students with materials for online learning. Several Vermont school districts stayed open Monday, and some announced they would be open Tuesday as well.
Per Gov. Chris Sununu’s instructions, administrators in Hanover and Norwich were using the week to strategize, “to make sure that we’re able to make the best use possible of the next three weeks for our students,” SAU 70 Superintendent Jay Badams said.
Administrators in SAU 6, covering Claremont and Unity, convened at 6:30 Monday morning to finish hammering out details of a remote learning plan they’d begun working on last week and expect to have up and running by Wednesday.
“There’s a lot we’re still working out, and we know there are things that are going to come up,” Superintendent Mike Tempesta said in a phone interview.
All of the teachers in the SAU already use the educational platform Google Classroom, but to varying degrees, Tempesta said. On Monday, technology staff put tutorials together and conducted seminars with teachers. Meanwhile, teachers and paraprofessionals reached out to families of the 1,800 students in the SAU by phone to identify their technology needs.
Other districts were taking similar approaches to the technology challenge. School officials in Lebanon, Hartford, Mascoma Valley and Newport, among others, also reached out to families on Monday, while getting their teachers up to speed with technology.
“The general plan is that the teachers and support staff are using the week to devise and modify their lessons so that they can be delivered remotely … and making sure we have mechanisms to get that information to the kids,” Brendan Minnihan, superintendent of SAU 43 in Newport, said. While students in grades pre-K through 4 will receive mostly paper-based assignments, older students will work primarily online, he said.
A Chromebook will be supplied to any family that doesn’t have a device for accessing learning materials, he said. Internet access may prove a more difficult challenge.
“I was talking to someone today who said that there’s just no internet where they live,” Minnihan said.
Mascoma Valley Regional High School plans to loan mobile hotspots to families who have cellphone plans but is still determining how to connect those who don’t, Principal Tom Fitzgerald said in a phone interview.
Generally speaking, though, Fitzgerald said he feels confident the school is ready for remote learning, which will begin Wednesday.
“All of our students have Chromebooks, and they’ve already been deployed,” he said. “All of our teachers are already set up in Google Classroom and use it regularly.”
Teachers and administrators in the 10-town White River Valley Supervisory Union began preparations to close school at an in-service day last Wednesday and communicated via Google meet-up and email on Monday to lay the groundwork for remote learning and other accommodations.
“Anticipating that the governor might close school, we asked students” on Friday to take home any items they might need, said Laurie Smith, a health teacher in the White River Valley School District.
What remote learning lessons might look like will vary from district to district.
So far, the Bethel and Royalton K-12 district is offering flexible plans for students in the middle and elementary grades.
“We developed something that we’re calling a learning menu,” Smith said, a list of possible activities that include reading and math but also building a Rube Goldberg machine or cooking a meal from a different culture. Students are to complete two or three activities a day, then reflect on their learning through a format the teachers have set up.
As a health teacher, Smith also has encouraged students to be deliberate in thinking about their health during the three-week suspension of in-school classes, suggesting they set up ways to reach their friends, plans to exercise and good eating habits from the get-go.
In Hartford, Dothan Brook School Principal Rick Dustin-Eichler described plans that are a bit more formal. Digital devices will go home with students tomorrow, including for kindergarteners, teachers will develop lessons this week, and the lessons will begin in literacy and math, as well as world language, art, music and physical education, on Monday.
“There’ll probably be two hours at the most of work a day,” Dustin-Eichler said.
“We want to give kids the opportunity to maintain skills, so we don’t see the regression” that typically crops up after winter and summer vacations, he added. At the high school level, students have to continue to forge ahead, particularly in Advanced Placement and other tough courses.
Even with their buildings closed, school districts are required to provide special education services and meals to qualified students. Many districts are planning to use existing bus routes to bring meals to students.
White River Valley School District plans to offer lunches free of charge to any children up to age 18 from any town at the district’s campuses in Bethel and Royalton, according to a message from the district’s food service director Willy Walker. Delivery is in the works.
“At a time like this, we have to make this easy,” said Bruce Labs, superintendent of the 10-town White River Valley Supervisory Union. Every school in the SU will be offering something similar, he said.
Mascoma Valley Regional School District supplied bag lunches for pickup Monday and administrators were devising plans to use school bus drivers to deliver lunches, as well as drop off and pick up learning materials, technology and textbooks.
“We’re providing a breakfast and lunch every day to every kid who wants it, free of charge,” Fitzgerald said.
The provision of special education services is equally challenging.
“That’s definitely a work in progress,” Dustin-Eichler said.
Vermont districts received some guidance from the state Monday. Each child is going to have an individualized distance learning plan, and special education caseworkers will check in with them, he said.
Some students will be able to receive services remotely, Minnihan said. Others may be able to work with educators in small groups, although that option is still under consideration, he said. Still others may have to receive “compensatory” services once school starts again.
At the state’s direction, districts also are working out how to provide child care for parents who work in health care, Scott said, but it’s a work in progress. “At this point, we don’t have it perfected.”
Over the coming days, school staff will begin addressing numerous other issues such as how to conduct testing, how to keep kids on schedule and how to effectively facilitate classes that typically rely on hands-on learning.
“Our goal in this is to make sure we take care of our kids, that everyone’s being fed, that we’re touching base and keeping the relationship up,” Fitzgerald said. “And we’ll figure out the academics as we go.”
Sarah Earle can be reached at searle@vnews.com or 603-727-3268. Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.
