What’s your elementary school plan?

[Anonymous]

PP mention that K kids will have direct teacher instruction in person 4 days and wednesday virtual in March, for real? No looking at monitors/chromebook for 4 days a week in person, that is exciting news to hear!! Is it because only 50% of K kids chosen to go in person, so the school building can make these accommodation? I hope that reflects hope that more young elementary grades kids will have direct teacher instruction days in the fall when more kids choose to come in person.....

[Anonymous]

Who is going to teach the other kids who stay virtual? Is there an assigned teacher for virtual students and another teacher for in-person students? If that is not the case, direct instruction may mean that the teacher is in the same classroom as the in-person students but teaching to all students via Zoom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP mention that K kids will have direct teacher instruction in person 4 days and wednesday virtual in March, for real? No looking at monitors/chromebook for 4 days a week in person, that is exciting news to hear!! Is it because only 50% of K kids chosen to go in person, so the school building can make these accommodation? I hope that reflects hope that more young elementary grades kids will have direct teacher instruction days in the fall when more kids choose to come in person.....

It is probably a Title I or focus school.

[Anonymous]

The 4 days a week in person works when class sizes are low, like in a Focus or Title 1 school. It gets trickier in older grades where class sizes grow. Our school is in person 4 days per week for grades K-3, with teachers in classrooms for K-2, paraeducators supervising virtual learning for 3-5, with 4th and 5th graders only able to come in every other week. Teachers aren't teaching both virtual and in person kids at the same time. Oddly enough, the Focus and Title 1 schools tended to have fewer say they wanted to return in person though people can now change their mind on that, if room.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every other week in person. Kids in class with their teacher. Teacher is teaching in person kids and DL kids at the same time.

So teaching to the camera.

Same model at our school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP mention that K kids will have direct teacher instruction in person 4 days and wednesday virtual in March, for real? No looking at monitors/chromebook for 4 days a week in person, that is exciting news to hear!! Is it because only 50% of K kids chosen to go in person, so the school building can make these accommodation? I hope that reflects hope that more young elementary grades kids will have direct teacher instruction days in the fall when more kids choose to come in person.....

It is probably a Title I or focus school.

I am the (or one of) the people that mentioned 4 days a week for K (and only K). It is not a Title 1/focus school and it is actually at a school that had among the highest in-person survey response in the county. And I would have to assume the return rate for K was at least as high as average.

The K classes have around 20 kids in them, so they will have to have more than 10 to 12 kids per class to make it work, although I am not sure how.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP mention that K kids will have direct teacher instruction in person 4 days and wednesday virtual in March, for real? No looking at monitors/chromebook for 4 days a week in person, that is exciting news to hear!! Is it because only 50% of K kids chosen to go in person, so the school building can make these accommodation? I hope that reflects hope that more young elementary grades kids will have direct teacher instruction days in the fall when more kids choose to come in person.....

It is probably a Title I or focus school.

I am the (or one of) the people that mentioned 4 days a week for K (and only K). It is not a Title 1/focus school and it is actually at a school that had among the highest in-person survey response in the county. And I would have to assume the return rate for K was at least as high as average.

The K classes have around 20 kids in them, so they will have to have more than 10 to 12 kids per class to make it work, although I am not sure how.

And they are not doing A/B weeks? Because our school was told there is no flexibility from county to offer every week, even if <50% of the kids are coming back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP mention that K kids will have direct teacher instruction in person 4 days and wednesday virtual in March, for real? No looking at monitors/chromebook for 4 days a week in person, that is exciting news to hear!! Is it because only 50% of K kids chosen to go in person, so the school building can make these accommodation? I hope that reflects hope that more young elementary grades kids will have direct teacher instruction days in the fall when more kids choose to come in person.....

It is probably a Title I or focus school.

I am the (or one of) the people that mentioned 4 days a week for K (and only K). It is not a Title 1/focus school and it is actually at a school that had among the highest in-person survey response in the county. And I would have to assume the return rate for K was at least as high as average.

The K classes have around 20 kids in them, so they will have to have more than 10 to 12 kids per class to make it work, although I am not sure how.

And they are not doing A/B weeks? Because our school was told there is no flexibility from county to offer every week, even if <50% of the kids are coming back.

The county model has grades k-2 coming every week for all elementary schools. Grades 3-5 are every week or every other week depending on focus, title 1, etc status. I’m guessing the extra classrooms from grades 3-5 will become k-2 classrooms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP mention that K kids will have direct teacher instruction in person 4 days and wednesday virtual in March, for real? No looking at monitors/chromebook for 4 days a week in person, that is exciting news to hear!! Is it because only 50% of K kids chosen to go in person, so the school building can make these accommodation? I hope that reflects hope that more young elementary grades kids will have direct teacher instruction days in the fall when more kids choose to come in person.....

It is probably a Title I or focus school.

I am the (or one of) the people that mentioned 4 days a week for K (and only K). It is not a Title 1/focus school and it is actually at a school that had among the highest in-person survey response in the county. And I would have to assume the return rate for K was at least as high as average.

The K classes have around 20 kids in them, so they will have to have more than 10 to 12 kids per class to make it work, although I am not sure how.

And they are not doing A/B weeks? Because our school was told there is no flexibility from county to offer every week, even if <50% of the kids are coming back.

No, there aren't A/B weeks for K. There are for the older grades. Our response rate overall was way over 50%, so I am not sure how they are planning to do it. Maybe if they had K classes in larger rooms they could have 15 kids? That's pure speculation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP mention that K kids will have direct teacher instruction in person 4 days and wednesday virtual in March, for real? No looking at monitors/chromebook for 4 days a week in person, that is exciting news to hear!! Is it because only 50% of K kids chosen to go in person, so the school building can make these accommodation? I hope that reflects hope that more young elementary grades kids will have direct teacher instruction days in the fall when more kids choose to come in person.....

It is probably a Title I or focus school.

I am the (or one of) the people that mentioned 4 days a week for K (and only K). It is not a Title 1/focus school and it is actually at a school that had among the highest in-person survey response in the county. And I would have to assume the return rate for K was at least as high as average.

The K classes have around 20 kids in them, so they will have to have more than 10 to 12 kids per class to make it work, although I am not sure how.

And they are not doing A/B weeks? Because our school was told there is no flexibility from county to offer every week, even if <50% of the kids are coming back.

The county model has grades k-2 coming every week for all elementary schools. Grades 3-5 are every week or every other week depending on focus, title 1, etc status. I’m guessing the extra classrooms from grades 3-5 will become k-2 classrooms.

Yes, but 50% of each 3-5 class is coming in each week, meaning those classrooms will be in use each week, just with half the kids. I don't think the week on week off will actually open up rooms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I agree with you. My issue is that they seem to not have spent the last 11 months planning for what happens when the schools reopen. And I'm not talking about the teachers. I'm talking about the school leadership. I'm the poster about Somerset Elementary, where 70% of parents opted for "in-person" learning and the principle was reading slides she hadn't read before. Caught herself surprised at the words she was saying outside to an audience of 170+ people. There was no real plan outside of "kids will come to school by 845. 9-1130 is zoom learning, 1130 - 1 is lunch and wellness, some possible one on one in person, but we haven thought that out yet. Lunch in the classroom. We don't know what recess will look like yet. 1 - 3 is zoom school. This isn't want you would like to hear, but is what we can do." What have you been planning for the last 11 months?? The classroom cap is 12-15 students. More than that have to go to an overflow room, with a para-educator (a new term for me) to monitor the classroom. If you in an flow room, they will try to make sure its only one grade. If you are in an overflow room, its only for a week. They will try to put you one week in overflow and one week with your teacher, but zooming.

What a mess.

I have no doubt that the Somerset principal was unprepared. I was raised by two public school administrators and have worked in public schools for more than 20 years in various states and different kinds of school districts. I have a child at Somerset right now. The Somerset principal is one of the worst administrators that I have ever come across. That school, and any school, deserves better.

[Anonymous]

My plan is to move. Plenty of places have 5 day/week school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My plan is to move. Plenty of places have 5 day/week school.

See ya!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We received an email from the principal today saying that teachers will be on zoom and kids will be in the classroom with a monitor. All interventions, ESOL, etc will be virtual.

Interested in other elementary schools plans

Stay away and don't get COVID.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Those of you who say teachers on zoom - does that mean no teacher will be in the classroom? Just a random monitor? And schools think parents will be ok with that?

Everyone I know who selected to return in person did it with the assumption that the teacher would be there. If schools are planning monitors around the numbers from the survey they're going to have a big issue...

What exactly are parents going to do about? About the only thing they can do is switch to DL and, frankly, I bet the schools would be thrilled if more people switched to DL.

More conspiratorial people out there might think that they are making in-person as unappealing as possible to reduce the number of people actually doing it.

Basically mcps would fund classroom monitor jobs but not extra teachers to create ratio of 12th person classrooms. They did not give any kind of adequate information about how concurrent could work or what technology would need to be purchased.

I'm sure Montgomery county's failure to plan will totally end up being blamed on the teacher's Union