With five weeks left in the school year, top leaders at Portland Public Schools said it’s too late to make big changes.
So even though health officials say that three feet is an acceptable distance for students to learn together, Oregon’s largest district is going to stick with six feet of separation. Making a change would require agreement with the Portland Association of Teachers, among other considerations.
“It’s not just about renegotiating with the union, but it’s also about the operational aspects of the district: re-routing buses, schedules would have to be re-done,” PPS Chief of Schools Shawn Bird told OPB Thursday.
And besides, Bird said the district was able to accommodate all the students who expressed interest in hybrid learning using the six-foot distancing rules.
Rather than changes this spring, Bird and Supt. Guadalupe Guerrero say they’re looking ahead to expanded instructional offerings this summer, buoyed by millions in federal funding. The district leaders said this summer, and a hoped-for in-person return in the fall, will be key to shoring up learning losses from two school years disrupted by a global pandemic.
In a lengthy interview on OPB’s Think Out Loud, Guerrero outlined a few priorities to help address learning gaps for students that have flared, or deepened, during the pandemic.
Guerrero said the gaps start with the district’s youngest students, including some who have spent their first year of school without the teacher and peer interaction that one expects in public school education.
“We know some of our entering first graders didn’t participate in in-person kindergarten,” he said.
Guerrero said the district wants to address shortcomings before primary students get too far along in school.
“Everybody can agree that our students who have good early education are going to be better prepared to commence their elementary experience, which is why we’re investing in early kindergarten transition,” he said.
Guerrero said the district is offering an expanded range of options with a racial equity focus in partnership with community-based organizations, some of which have worked with the district through the School Uniting Neighborhoods program. While some students may groan at the thought of attending school in the summer, PPS is attempting to present the programs as being less remedial and more…fun?
“We want to make sure that this summer reengages all of our students,” Guerrero said, describing offerings that are “not just about the additional credit-earning opportunities for high school students.” Instead, he emphasized a theme of “create, learn and play” with opportunities “in the arts” and interacting with teachers and students “face to face.”
Bird said a big focus of the district’s roughly $100 million in federal funds will go to “bring many students back into our schools for instruction that we haven’t offered previously in the summer in a long time.”
Rather than a focus on high schoolers who are behind on credits, or students who are a transition point such as moving to middle or high school, Bird said courses will be open to students from primary through middle school.
“Our second through eighth graders will have up to 60 hours of instruction in literacy, math and integrated STEAM [Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math] activities at 23 of our sites,” Bird said.
While summer is expected to offer much more programming to PPS students than has been available for years, administrators are less certain about what the fall will look like. Guerrero noted that PPS has been required to operate within guidelines set by the Oregon Department of Education and Oregon Health Authority, and he’s anticipating final direction might not come until July.
“That gives us anxiety around how to plan,” Guerrero said.
He encouraged people in the Portland area to continue to follow health guidelines and get vaccinated to improve the chances that COVID-19 rates will be low enough to enable fully in-person school in the fall.
District leaders also don’t know much about exactly where students are, in terms of achievement. PPS hasn’t administered state-mandated Smarter Balanced Assessment tests since 2019, and the district is one of several not running the test this spring, either. The district’s own MAP tests didn’t assess all students, and may have missed many students at greatest risk of falling behind.
Guerrero and Bird didn’t lay out any specific ways that the district would fill in this data gap, though they noted that classroom-level assessments are a regular fixture in any school year.
“Every year, in our schools, when teachers get new students each year, they’re going to have to do some evaluation of where students are in their learning,” Bird said, adding that the district’s curriculum department has also been looking into which standards may need additional focus in the upcoming year.
But students, parents and teachers who may have enjoyed the two-year respite from the SBAC tests shouldn’t get used to the reduction. State regulators aren’t likely to allow PPS to continue to avoid the tests, and while Guerrero agreed with dropping them for this spring, he sees value in resuming the exams next year.
“We’ll get back on track in the coming spring and will administer the full battery of SBAC, as well as all of our other interim and formative assessments,” Guerrero said.
While school leaders in Oregon are crossing their fingers for a return to in-person instruction, without the threat of quarantines or closures over their heads, the next school year will likely be different from years past. Bird suggests the pandemic offered some positive instructional lessons for teachers that may last.
“I think you’ll see a change to the classroom when you get back to regular learning, because teachers and students have experimented with a lot more technology,” Bird said. “Students will have more access to instruction, because now we have these online platforms and we have these apps that kids can use.”
Ultimately, the response to the pandemic is challenging long-held beliefs about school. At PPS, that includes far more instruction in the summer. But Bird suggests another school pattern may also change. With the familiarity teachers and students have built up with technology, he says learning doesn’t have to end when the dismissal bell rings.
“Learning doesn’t have to be just confined to eight to three,” he said.
Copyright 2021 Oregon Public Broadcasting