Anonymous
07/05/2020 08:02
Subject: Re:DCPS Employee Return to In Person Work Guidance
This thread proves the point that this is nearly an impossible task. Every school is staffed and funded differently. During a normal year this doesn’t matter much, but during an emergency this makes a huge difference. Some schools have tons of support staff and some do not. The funding inequalities are really showing. This has exposed what people have been saying for years about DCPS. Why does L-T have all that extra non classroom staff? How are they getting the budget money for it? Meanwhile, my EOTP school had to cut aides due to the lack of head start funding.
Anonymous
07/05/2020 07:02
Subject: Re:DCPS Employee Return to In Person Work Guidance
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:^^^its against the paraprofessionals contract to ge in charge of a class
I feel like this could be worked around on a temporary emergency basis pretty easily. Let them opt in for more $$.
You’re assuming that they would want that responsibility. I know people who have been paras for decades because they do not want the added responsibilities of grading, planning, and meetings.
Grading, planning, & meetings aren’t happening.
We’ll be teaching your kids from behind plexi glass. We won’t be walking to their desks, conferring- really anything. You kid will sit at their desks with a book, pencil, & paper.
And just no. No is having their contract changed. Your kids will alternate days in the classroom. Maybe taught by the grade level teacher & maybe taught by the PE teacher. Also- a special education teacher can definitely have a class. A poster up thread said it would violate LRE...
Ummm, no. Give them a class of kids with IEPS & kids without IEPS. No problems with LRE
That might work if you have enough sped teachers in the school to divide kids like that. We don’t. We have one sped teacher cover three grades.
Anonymous
07/05/2020 05:19
Subject: Re:DCPS Employee Return to In Person Work Guidance
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:^^^its against the paraprofessionals contract to ge in charge of a class
I feel like this could be worked around on a temporary emergency basis pretty easily. Let them opt in for more $$.
You’re assuming that they would want that responsibility. I know people who have been paras for decades because they do not want the added responsibilities of grading, planning, and meetings.
Grading, planning, & meetings aren’t happening.
We’ll be teaching your kids from behind plexi glass. We won’t be walking to their desks, conferring- really anything. You kid will sit at their desks with a book, pencil, & paper.
And just no. No is having their contract changed. Your kids will alternate days in the classroom. Maybe taught by the grade level teacher & maybe taught by the PE teacher. Also- a special education teacher can definitely have a class. A poster up thread said it would violate LRE...
Ummm, no. Give them a class of kids with IEPS & kids without IEPS. No problems with LRE
Anonymous
07/05/2020 00:39
Subject: Re:DCPS Employee Return to In Person Work Guidance
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:^^^its against the paraprofessionals contract to ge in charge of a class
I feel like this could be worked around on a temporary emergency basis pretty easily. Let them opt in for more $$.
I’m not sure you’d want the aides in my school running a classroom. We have some much older ladies who clearly love the kids and can handle helping out, but no amount of money will give them the skills to handle kids and instruction by themselves over night. (That being said I once worked with an aide that was better than the really good classroom teacher, but she was a fully certified teacher and this was the foot in the door to a regular position, not a career as an aide.)
Anonymous
07/05/2020 00:39
Subject: Re:DCPS Employee Return to In Person Work Guidance
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:^^^its against the paraprofessionals contract to ge in charge of a class
I feel like this could be worked around on a temporary emergency basis pretty easily. Let them opt in for more $$.
You’re assuming that they would want that responsibility. I know people who have been paras for decades because they do not want the added responsibilities of grading, planning, and meetings.
Anonymous
07/05/2020 00:16
Subject: Re:DCPS Employee Return to In Person Work Guidance
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:To the person who said no specials because of 100 kids... As a science teacher I teach 120 a day. Your solution isn’t feasible at the middle and high school level.
To the poster above:
Art teachers can see up to 180 students in a day. Every day is a new set of classes. So if you teacher 500 students in Art in a given week you are exposed to 500 students, sometimes they come twice weekly. My understanding of Middle and High school is that you see a fraction of that many students weekly. Obviously, still not a safe situation either.
Ok fine. You both get trophies.
Stop it! I'm a parent with high schoolers and I don't want to have my kids miss 2+ weeks of math class because their teacher got COVID. At this point, I think it's easier to be 100% online. The hybrid model presents a lot of disruption and half-assed teaching. If it were all online, teachers could be planning and have daily classes. How are our kids going to be in a class with 10 kids? It will completely water down teaching at the MS and HS level, as this teacher pointed out.
I genuinely think they should be trying for 100% distance learning for MS & HS and 100% in person for ES. The logistics of hybrid seem basically impossible for MS/HS and proper DL = real learning; for ES, the logistics are pretty easy -- 2x the teachers and 2x the classrooms; maybe specials either remotely or not at all -- and DL is virtually pointless.
I’m pp and agree.
No way will DL for specials fly with GenEd F2F. It would be considered inequitable by the GenEd teachers and open a can of worms for the administrators.
So specials teachers act as regular classroom teachers until the pandemic is over or we can go back to regular school. At this point music and art can be sacrificed for classroom learning. Not that I don’t think those are important, it’s just that being in school every day and learning to read and write are more important.
That’s fine but that doesn’t solve staffing issues. There are maybe 4/5? Specials teachers in the school. Adding one per grade level (grades 1-5) doesn’t really do anything. And to be honest....I’m not sure how good an art/pe/Spanish teacher is going to be at teaching reading.
Depends a lot on the school... L-T has aides through K, so that takes care of itself. For 1-5, you need 3/3/3/3/2 extra teachers I think. (Classes are from 20-23 students, so this relies on a few opting into DL, but I’m sure that would happen.) You have PEx2, librarian, Spanish, art/French, footprints x 2, science, music, ELA instructional coach, math interventionist & computer... So we extra teachers right there, leaving you only 2 short. Surely the after-school coordinator and/or one of the 15ish other special services support staff or 5ish office staff or AP could step in. Also, the 6 City Year folks could be used creatively to supplement in classes with aides. Anyway, you’d probably need to move things around a bit — working with teachers — to match people to their kids well, but there are absolutely enough teachers at the school for it to work. I’m sure it’s true at other schools too, I just don’t know details of their staffing. Anyway, I think it’s feasible.
Well let’s see. My upper NW school has 4 specials teachers, 2 reading specialists, two math specialists, 3 aides in PreK, 3 aides in K (for 4 classes) and that’s it for non classroom teachers. We have 5 classes per grade level. Special education teachers can’t have a class as it would violate LRE. Paraprofessionals cannot be in charge of a class (unless they are napping). We also have zero extra classrooms. So even if we could split the kids, there would be no where to put them.
It’s against their contract. So your idea may work in Title One schools, but it won’t work everywhere.
Okay at least have K-2 full time with specials teachers/instructional coaches/reading and math specialists taking a class. Those grades are crucial for reading and therefore should be prioritized.
Anonymous
07/04/2020 22:10
Subject: Re:DCPS Employee Return to In Person Work Guidance
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:To the person who said no specials because of 100 kids... As a science teacher I teach 120 a day. Your solution isn’t feasible at the middle and high school level.
To the poster above:
Art teachers can see up to 180 students in a day. Every day is a new set of classes. So if you teacher 500 students in Art in a given week you are exposed to 500 students, sometimes they come twice weekly. My understanding of Middle and High school is that you see a fraction of that many students weekly. Obviously, still not a safe situation either.
Ok fine. You both get trophies.
Stop it! I'm a parent with high schoolers and I don't want to have my kids miss 2+ weeks of math class because their teacher got COVID. At this point, I think it's easier to be 100% online. The hybrid model presents a lot of disruption and half-assed teaching. If it were all online, teachers could be planning and have daily classes. How are our kids going to be in a class with 10 kids? It will completely water down teaching at the MS and HS level, as this teacher pointed out.
I genuinely think they should be trying for 100% distance learning for MS & HS and 100% in person for ES. The logistics of hybrid seem basically impossible for MS/HS and proper DL = real learning; for ES, the logistics are pretty easy -- 2x the teachers and 2x the classrooms; maybe specials either remotely or not at all -- and DL is virtually pointless.
I’m pp and agree.
No way will DL for specials fly with GenEd F2F. It would be considered inequitable by the GenEd teachers and open a can of worms for the administrators.
So specials teachers act as regular classroom teachers until the pandemic is over or we can go back to regular school. At this point music and art can be sacrificed for classroom learning. Not that I don’t think those are important, it’s just that being in school every day and learning to read and write are more important.
That’s fine but that doesn’t solve staffing issues. There are maybe 4/5? Specials teachers in the school. Adding one per grade level (grades 1-5) doesn’t really do anything. And to be honest....I’m not sure how good an art/pe/Spanish teacher is going to be at teaching reading.
Depends a lot on the school... L-T has aides through K, so that takes care of itself. For 1-5, you need 3/3/3/3/2 extra teachers I think. (Classes are from 20-23 students, so this relies on a few opting into DL, but I’m sure that would happen.) You have PEx2, librarian, Spanish, art/French, footprints x 2, science, music, ELA instructional coach, math interventionist & computer... So we extra teachers right there, leaving you only 2 short. Surely the after-school coordinator and/or one of the 15ish other special services support staff or 5ish office staff or AP could step in. Also, the 6 City Year folks could be used creatively to supplement in classes with aides. Anyway, you’d probably need to move things around a bit — working with teachers — to match people to their kids well, but there are absolutely enough teachers at the school for it to work. I’m sure it’s true at other schools too, I just don’t know details of their staffing. Anyway, I think it’s feasible.
Well let’s see. My upper NW school has 4 specials teachers, 2 reading specialists, two math specialists, 3 aides in PreK, 3 aides in K (for 4 classes) and that’s it for non classroom teachers. We have 5 classes per grade level. Special education teachers can’t have a class as it would violate LRE. Paraprofessionals cannot be in charge of a class (unless they are napping). We also have zero extra classrooms. So even if we could split the kids, there would be no where to put them.
It’s against their contract. So your idea may work in Title One schools, but it won’t work everywhere.
L-T isn’t actually Title I anymore. I’m surprised you upper NW school is so poorly staffed, I admit. I thought UNW was the land of gravy train PTAs...? Science teacher and Foodprints are all paid for by the PTA. I think the wealthier schools on the Hill (Brent/Maury) have aides through 1st grade. And I thought they had more specials?
Upper NW schools (minus Janney) got out of HSA’s paying school employees. They now cover supplies so the admin can move that money to cover salaries. I’m surprised other HSA haven’t gotten out of paying employees. It’s a conflict of interest. Schools up here don’t get much of any at-risk funds in the budget. That adds up to a lot of missed dollars.
Anonymous
07/04/2020 22:05
Subject: Re:DCPS Employee Return to In Person Work Guidance
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:To the person who said no specials because of 100 kids... As a science teacher I teach 120 a day. Your solution isn’t feasible at the middle and high school level.
To the poster above:
Art teachers can see up to 180 students in a day. Every day is a new set of classes. So if you teacher 500 students in Art in a given week you are exposed to 500 students, sometimes they come twice weekly. My understanding of Middle and High school is that you see a fraction of that many students weekly. Obviously, still not a safe situation either.
Ok fine. You both get trophies.
Stop it! I'm a parent with high schoolers and I don't want to have my kids miss 2+ weeks of math class because their teacher got COVID. At this point, I think it's easier to be 100% online. The hybrid model presents a lot of disruption and half-assed teaching. If it were all online, teachers could be planning and have daily classes. How are our kids going to be in a class with 10 kids? It will completely water down teaching at the MS and HS level, as this teacher pointed out.
I genuinely think they should be trying for 100% distance learning for MS & HS and 100% in person for ES. The logistics of hybrid seem basically impossible for MS/HS and proper DL = real learning; for ES, the logistics are pretty easy -- 2x the teachers and 2x the classrooms; maybe specials either remotely or not at all -- and DL is virtually pointless.
I’m pp and agree.
No way will DL for specials fly with GenEd F2F. It would be considered inequitable by the GenEd teachers and open a can of worms for the administrators.
So specials teachers act as regular classroom teachers until the pandemic is over or we can go back to regular school. At this point music and art can be sacrificed for classroom learning. Not that I don’t think those are important, it’s just that being in school every day and learning to read and write are more important.
That’s fine but that doesn’t solve staffing issues. There are maybe 4/5? Specials teachers in the school. Adding one per grade level (grades 1-5) doesn’t really do anything. And to be honest....I’m not sure how good an art/pe/Spanish teacher is going to be at teaching reading.
Depends a lot on the school... L-T has aides through K, so that takes care of itself. For 1-5, you need 3/3/3/3/2 extra teachers I think. (Classes are from 20-23 students, so this relies on a few opting into DL, but I’m sure that would happen.) You have PEx2, librarian, Spanish, art/French, footprints x 2, science, music, ELA instructional coach, math interventionist & computer... So we extra teachers right there, leaving you only 2 short. Surely the after-school coordinator and/or one of the 15ish other special services support staff or 5ish office staff or AP could step in. Also, the 6 City Year folks could be used creatively to supplement in classes with aides. Anyway, you’d probably need to move things around a bit — working with teachers — to match people to their kids well, but there are absolutely enough teachers at the school for it to work. I’m sure it’s true at other schools too, I just don’t know details of their staffing. Anyway, I think it’s feasible.
Well let’s see. My upper NW school has 4 specials teachers, 2 reading specialists, two math specialists, 3 aides in PreK, 3 aides in K (for 4 classes) and that’s it for non classroom teachers. We have 5 classes per grade level. Special education teachers can’t have a class as it would violate LRE. Paraprofessionals cannot be in charge of a class (unless they are napping). We also have zero extra classrooms. So even if we could split the kids, there would be no where to put them.
It’s against their contract. So your idea may work in Title One schools, but it won’t work everywhere.
L-T isn’t actually Title I anymore. I’m surprised you upper NW school is so poorly staffed, I admit. I thought UNW was the land of gravy train PTAs...? Science teacher and Foodprints are all paid for by the PTA. I think the wealthier schools on the Hill (Brent/Maury) have aides through 1st grade. And I thought they had more specials?
Anonymous
07/04/2020 22:00
Subject: Re:DCPS Employee Return to In Person Work Guidance
Anonymous wrote:^^^its against the paraprofessionals contract to ge in charge of a class
I feel like this could be worked around on a temporary emergency basis pretty easily. Let them opt in for more $$.
Anonymous
07/04/2020 21:59
Subject: DCPS Employee Return to In Person Work Guidance
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:^^ Oh sorry and extra classrooms are found at local middle & high schools. On the Hill, S-H could accommodate half of L-T, SWS, Peabody and CHML easily and is only a few blocks from most of them. E-H and Eastern could cover Miner (wouldnt need much coverage), Maury, Watkins, Payne and Tyler; not quite as convenient, but not unmanageable. And so on... If parents don’t like it, they can opt into DL, staffed centrally/combing kids from various schools.
This wouldn’t work for any Deal/Wilson feeders. There are no extra classrooms in MS/HS. This is part of the reason this is so hard to figure out for Dcps. What may work for some schools will not work for others. There is no one solution for the school system.
The whole idea is this would be paired with 100% DL for MS and HS. All the classrooms would be empty.
Anonymous
07/04/2020 21:51
Subject: DCPS Employee Return to In Person Work Guidance
Anonymous wrote:^^ Oh sorry and extra classrooms are found at local middle & high schools. On the Hill, S-H could accommodate half of L-T, SWS, Peabody and CHML easily and is only a few blocks from most of them. E-H and Eastern could cover Miner (wouldnt need much coverage), Maury, Watkins, Payne and Tyler; not quite as convenient, but not unmanageable. And so on... If parents don’t like it, they can opt into DL, staffed centrally/combing kids from various schools.
This wouldn’t work for any Deal/Wilson feeders. There are no extra classrooms in MS/HS. This is part of the reason this is so hard to figure out for Dcps. What may work for some schools will not work for others. There is no one solution for the school system.
Anonymous
07/04/2020 21:49
Subject: Re:DCPS Employee Return to In Person Work Guidance
^^^its against the paraprofessionals contract to ge in charge of a class
Anonymous
07/04/2020 21:48
Subject: Re:DCPS Employee Return to In Person Work Guidance
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:To the person who said no specials because of 100 kids... As a science teacher I teach 120 a day. Your solution isn’t feasible at the middle and high school level.
To the poster above:
Art teachers can see up to 180 students in a day. Every day is a new set of classes. So if you teacher 500 students in Art in a given week you are exposed to 500 students, sometimes they come twice weekly. My understanding of Middle and High school is that you see a fraction of that many students weekly. Obviously, still not a safe situation either.
Ok fine. You both get trophies.
Stop it! I'm a parent with high schoolers and I don't want to have my kids miss 2+ weeks of math class because their teacher got COVID. At this point, I think it's easier to be 100% online. The hybrid model presents a lot of disruption and half-assed teaching. If it were all online, teachers could be planning and have daily classes. How are our kids going to be in a class with 10 kids? It will completely water down teaching at the MS and HS level, as this teacher pointed out.
I genuinely think they should be trying for 100% distance learning for MS & HS and 100% in person for ES. The logistics of hybrid seem basically impossible for MS/HS and proper DL = real learning; for ES, the logistics are pretty easy -- 2x the teachers and 2x the classrooms; maybe specials either remotely or not at all -- and DL is virtually pointless.
I’m pp and agree.
No way will DL for specials fly with GenEd F2F. It would be considered inequitable by the GenEd teachers and open a can of worms for the administrators.
So specials teachers act as regular classroom teachers until the pandemic is over or we can go back to regular school. At this point music and art can be sacrificed for classroom learning. Not that I don’t think those are important, it’s just that being in school every day and learning to read and write are more important.
That’s fine but that doesn’t solve staffing issues. There are maybe 4/5? Specials teachers in the school. Adding one per grade level (grades 1-5) doesn’t really do anything. And to be honest....I’m not sure how good an art/pe/Spanish teacher is going to be at teaching reading.
Depends a lot on the school... L-T has aides through K, so that takes care of itself. For 1-5, you need 3/3/3/3/2 extra teachers I think. (Classes are from 20-23 students, so this relies on a few opting into DL, but I’m sure that would happen.) You have PEx2, librarian, Spanish, art/French, footprints x 2, science, music, ELA instructional coach, math interventionist & computer... So we extra teachers right there, leaving you only 2 short. Surely the after-school coordinator and/or one of the 15ish other special services support staff or 5ish office staff or AP could step in. Also, the 6 City Year folks could be used creatively to supplement in classes with aides. Anyway, you’d probably need to move things around a bit — working with teachers — to match people to their kids well, but there are absolutely enough teachers at the school for it to work. I’m sure it’s true at other schools too, I just don’t know details of their staffing. Anyway, I think it’s feasible.
Well let’s see. My upper NW school has 4 specials teachers, 2 reading specialists, two math specialists, 3 aides in PreK, 3 aides in K (for 4 classes) and that’s it for non classroom teachers. We have 5 classes per grade level. Special education teachers can’t have a class as it would violate LRE. Paraprofessionals cannot be in charge of a class (unless they are napping). We also have zero extra classrooms. So even if we could split the kids, there would be no where to put them.
It’s against their contract. So your idea may work in Title One schools, but it won’t work everywhere.
Anonymous
07/04/2020 21:15
Subject: Re:DCPS Employee Return to In Person Work Guidance
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:To the person who said no specials because of 100 kids... As a science teacher I teach 120 a day. Your solution isn’t feasible at the middle and high school level.
To the poster above:
Art teachers can see up to 180 students in a day. Every day is a new set of classes. So if you teacher 500 students in Art in a given week you are exposed to 500 students, sometimes they come twice weekly. My understanding of Middle and High school is that you see a fraction of that many students weekly. Obviously, still not a safe situation either.
Ok fine. You both get trophies.
Stop it! I'm a parent with high schoolers and I don't want to have my kids miss 2+ weeks of math class because their teacher got COVID. At this point, I think it's easier to be 100% online. The hybrid model presents a lot of disruption and half-assed teaching. If it were all online, teachers could be planning and have daily classes. How are our kids going to be in a class with 10 kids? It will completely water down teaching at the MS and HS level, as this teacher pointed out.
I genuinely think they should be trying for 100% distance learning for MS & HS and 100% in person for ES. The logistics of hybrid seem basically impossible for MS/HS and proper DL = real learning; for ES, the logistics are pretty easy -- 2x the teachers and 2x the classrooms; maybe specials either remotely or not at all -- and DL is virtually pointless.
I’m pp and agree.
No way will DL for specials fly with GenEd F2F. It would be considered inequitable by the GenEd teachers and open a can of worms for the administrators.
So specials teachers act as regular classroom teachers until the pandemic is over or we can go back to regular school. At this point music and art can be sacrificed for classroom learning. Not that I don’t think those are important, it’s just that being in school every day and learning to read and write are more important.
That’s fine but that doesn’t solve staffing issues. There are maybe 4/5? Specials teachers in the school. Adding one per grade level (grades 1-5) doesn’t really do anything. And to be honest....I’m not sure how good an art/pe/Spanish teacher is going to be at teaching reading.
Depends a lot on the school... L-T has aides through K, so that takes care of itself. For 1-5, you need 3/3/3/3/2 extra teachers I think. (Classes are from 20-23 students, so this relies on a few opting into DL, but I’m sure that would happen.) You have PEx2, librarian, Spanish, art/French, footprints x 2, science, music, ELA instructional coach, math interventionist & computer... So we extra teachers right there, leaving you only 2 short. Surely the after-school coordinator and/or one of the 15ish other special services support staff or 5ish office staff or AP could step in. Also, the 6 City Year folks could be used creatively to supplement in classes with aides. Anyway, you’d probably need to move things around a bit — working with teachers — to match people to their kids well, but there are absolutely enough teachers at the school for it to work. I’m sure it’s true at other schools too, I just don’t know details of their staffing. Anyway, I think it’s feasible.
Anonymous
07/04/2020 21:06
Subject: DCPS Employee Return to In Person Work Guidance
^^ Oh sorry and extra classrooms are found at local middle & high schools. On the Hill, S-H could accommodate half of L-T, SWS, Peabody and CHML easily and is only a few blocks from most of them. E-H and Eastern could cover Miner (wouldnt need much coverage), Maury, Watkins, Payne and Tyler; not quite as convenient, but not unmanageable. And so on... If parents don’t like it, they can opt into DL, staffed centrally/combing kids from various schools.