AISD rolls out plan to start school year

By Donnie A. Lucas

Albany school officials rolled out the plan for opening the 2020-2021 school year this week, with the first day of classes still set for Wednesday, Aug. 19.

While the instructional plan does provide some alternates for parents who are considering keeping their child at home due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, most of the plan outlines business as usual for students in the district.

“We are primarily offering an on-campus instructional experience,” superintendent Jonathan Scott said. “However, there will options for parents not choosing to send their children.”

The district had hoped to determine what parents and the community as a whole wanted through an online survey that was made available several weeks ago, but participation was limited.

“We only had about 100 responses,” Scott said. “We think that there aren’t many parents who are planning on keeping their students at home, but we don’t know for sure.”

Online registration has been open for a couple of weeks, but participation there has also been slow.

“Everyone is still going to have to register online for the school year, so we hope they go ahead and help by doing it now,” the superintendent said.

The Texas Education Agency is requiring each school district to submit an instruction plan for the year, detailing how remote or distance instruction will be provided for students who stay at home.

In addition to on-campus instruction, students staying at home will have to complete the same work and in basically the same time period as students in the classroom.

“We want everyone to understand that online instruction will not be like it was last spring,” Scott said. “The same grading policies, course work and grade expectations will apply to the student in the classroom and the one that is at home.”

He also noted that students choosing online instruction will be required to continue with that method of instruction for at least one grading period.

“The decision that parents and students make on the type of instruction has to remain the same for the full six-week period,” Scott said. “They can’t make a change in the middle of the grading period.”

Alternative instruction has also been divided based on grade level.

Pre-K through fourth grade students who do not attend on-campus classes will receive instruction by prepared packets, but proof of daily engagement will be required by the student.

Students in grades 5-12 will be required to log in through Google Meets to each class in real time and observe the live instruction in the classroom. Teachers will note if each student at home is logged on and participating.

The term for the live remote participation is “synchronous,” meaning the remote students are present via the computer to each class and can see and hear instruction as it is given to the on-campus class in real time.

Scott said that teachers in each class will use a program called Screencastify to record each session, which could be made available to students through Google Classroom.

The recordings of the live instruction could be posted by teachers to offer further assistance or make up for absences. However, Scott stressed that for attendance purposes, students must “attend” each class via the computer in order to be counted present.

“The compulsory attendance law will be in effect for the school year,” Scott said. “Students must attend at least 90 percent of the school days as required by TEA.”

The superintendent noted that teachers will receive instruction on the required software programs such as Google Meets, Screencastify and Google Classroom during required professional development days starting the week Aug. 10.

If the state were to close schools like last March, the school could switch to a recorded version of classes, at least for grades 5-12, which is known as “asynchronous” instruction.

Scott said that he and the rest of the administrative team have been working on the instructional plan for some time. The plan was also presented to the school board on Monday.

Scott said that the administrative team is still working on procedures for parents wanting to request remote instruction.

“We are hoping that the big majority of students show up on the first day of school,” he said. “And we would like to have school as close to normal as possible while following CDC and government guidelines.”

He again stressed the importance of registering students using the online process.

Scott concluded by noting that students must be in on-campus instruction to participate in any UIL extracurricular activity.