We miss all of our families and students, and I know students miss seeing their classmates and teachers. Although we can agree the safety of our children and staff is paramount, Governor Baker's order to close schools for the remainder of the year was still tough news to take. The news is especially hard for our incredible Belmont High School Senior Class of 2020. Belmont is a resilient and wonderful community, and the school department thanks everyone for their constructive input and patience as we navigate through this challenging time.
SCHOOL COMMITTEE
School Committee Meeting April 23: The School Committee Finance Subcommittee and the Warrant Committee Education Subcommittee met to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on our FY20 and FY21 budgets. The FY20 discussion was centered on “fees” that some of our families have paid for services such as transportation, full day kindergarten, spring athletics, and other fee-based programs. The Finance Subcommittee will bring the topic to our full School Committee for a discussion and a vote at the April 28 meeting. The School Committee will be attending a joint meeting with the Select Board on April 27 to further discuss the financial issues the Town is facing due to COVID-19.
Also on the agenda is a reorganization of officer positions within the School Committee. At this time we want to say we are sorry to see School Committee Chair Susan Burgess-Cox leave the School Committee, and we were all so fortunate to have had her dedication, compassion, and steady hand as the chair.
Please see the agenda and access to the meeting.
TEACHING AND LEARNING
We have drafted a survey to get feedback from parents. The survey is to find out from parents how their student is experiencing remote learning and how they (as the support system at home) are experiencing it. As the days pass, we are professionally collaborating to discuss what is working and not working for our students and staff - is it too much, too little, or just right? We are asking parents to submit one survey for each child, and we will send it today, April 24, and it will be open through May 4. We will administer the survey again, probably at the beginning of June. Please see the Remote Learning Plan for your reference, originally presented to the School Committee at the April 7 meeting.
GOOD NEWS FROM THE VIRTUAL CLASSROOM
CMS Eighth Grade Science: As part of the cells unit, eighth grade science students have been studying the structure of DNA and how a cell uses DNA as the instructions to make proteins. Last week, Science Teachers Jonathan Marks, Joanne Marks, and Vanessa Bullard were thrilled to host a guest speaker for CMS students. Cell biologist Dr. Laura Lowery, a Chenery parent, recorded a presentation for eighth graders about her work with cell motion and cancer. Students then had an opportunity to submit questions, and these questions were used by the eighth grade science teachers during a recorded, online interview with Dr. Lowery for students to watch. While the teachers had hoped to have Dr. Lowery present to our students in person this spring, they are grateful that Dr. Lowery was willing to collaborate and creatively make the best of the situation so they could offer a guest speaker learning opportunity remotely. (Picture left to right: CMS Teachers Vanessa Bullard, Joanne Marks, Jonathan Marks, and Guest Speaker Dr. Laura Lowery)
Winn Brook Students Surprise to Staff: After Winn Brook staff made a video for their students, some of the children suggested they make their own as a surprise to the staff. Principal Janet Carey asked students to submit a picture of them for the staff to enjoy, resulting in this video.
BHS SENIOR YARD SIGNS
BHS Senior Yard Sign: Senior Yard signs were delivered and placed in student's front yards from parent volunteers this past weekend. If you are still interested in purchasing a sign, please go online to purchase your Senior Yard sign for $20.
BHS CROSS COUNTRY/TRACK & FIELD TEAM MEMBERS RUN AGAINST HUNGER
Members of the BHS Cross County/Track and Field teams are participating in the Run Against Hunger benefitting No Kid Hungry, a national organization working to end hunger and poverty, and now for children affected by COVID-19 school closures. This particular fundraising campaign has been going on all this week, and it ends on Sunday. The students are running, following physical distancing guidelines, for online pledges. Although the teams could not end their season the way they would have wanted due to COVID-19 closures, they chose a great way to help others in need.
PARENTING IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS PRE-RECORDED WEBINARS
BPS in collaboration with McLean Hospital presents a pre-recorded webinar on the topic of managing mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Please go to the BPS website for more information on the topic and access to the webinars.
U.S. CENSUS PARTICIPATION MATTERS
The U.S. Census Bureau has extended the deadline for the national census. Education Commissioner Jeffrey Riley said the census participation rate is lower than in previous census years, and is asking we all please fill out the form online or on paper if you have not already done so. There are many distractions going on in the lives of families right now but the census gives towns much needed funding for education, federal grants, funds to local communities for roads and healthcare, etc. This is especially important during this pandemic when many towns and schools will need this help more than ever due to reduced revenue. Please see more census information on the Town of Belmont website.
USEFUL INFORMATION
We have put links in previous newsletters to useful information. We will be placing them here from the various newsletters for your convenience.
Town and State:
Organizations:
YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED
In your Apr 17 newsletter you said you "previously announced the Burbank and Winn-Brook principal search results", but I cannot find the selected candidate information anywhere in the BPS site. Can you please re-post or clarify?
The information was in the April 3 newsletter. The Principal for the Winn Brook School is Anita Mecklenburg, and Seeley Okie, the current interim principal of the Burbank School, has been selected as the new Principal. Both Seeley and Anita will start on July 1, 2020. We would like thank the members of each Search Committees and the staff and families who attended the process last month.
For both students who have rapidly moved ahead in the curriculum and students who have fallen behind, how do you propose differentiating your classroom learning moving forward? Please describe how you plan to address this challenge?
During the summer administrators and teams of teachers will spend time adjusting the curriculum for each grade and subject to add standards not taught in the previous year. For example, grade 4 will be adjusted to include curriculum that was not taught in grade 3. We know that all students will be impacted in some way as a result of the school closure (both academically and socially/emotionally), and we will have additional supports in place to meet those needs when we return to school in the fall.
I feel kids need more interaction with their teachers and classmates. Why can’t daily lesson plans be rolled out to promote student-teacher engagement and a more active/interactive learning environment in a virtual format in which teachers present materials and set aside some time for class work?
We will continue to provide synchronous/real time virtual meetings and asynchronous instruction. The synchronous meetings are times for teachers to connect with students in support of their social and emotional well-being, and, especially for the older students, to answer questions about what they are learning. Teachers will provide instruction in asynchronous opportunities that students can use when they have a device at any time of the day. This might include lessons recorded by the teacher on a platform like Screencastify or the teacher directing the students to online instruction, such as a Khan Academy session. Teachers are providing work for students to complete. Instruction is provided in this way because all students do not have access to a device at all times of the day. In many cases families are sharing devices, and therefore requiring a student to participate in a lesson at a specific time would be challenging in families with more individuals than devices and students in different grades.
One important note: while we have a scope and sequence that outlines the learning for each subject and grade, staff create lesson plans as the year progresses; they do not have lesson plans created for the entire year. Additionally, we are not teaching the same amount of curriculum as we would have done if we had continued in normal, in-person schooling. We are focusing on selected standards of the curriculum, and we know that we will need to adjust the curriculum for the following year to address essential standards not addressed during the 2019-20 school year.
School buildings are closed, but has June 17 been announced as the official last day of school?
Yes, June 17 is the official last day of the 2019-20 school year.
How can we increase special education services to closer to the full IEP that students have? (For example: two 20-min reading sessions a week right now instead of four 30-min sessions listed in the IEP.) Is there capacity to increase the time slots to the same amount of time as listed in the IEP and to increase to the same number of weekly slots listed in the IEP?
Unfortunately, capacity is one of the main challenges, primarily in regards to time. Students and staff are not collectively available in real time as they typically are when schools are open. Additionally, due to the closures and the COVID-19 health crisis, many students and families, as well as staff, have challenges and significant stressors at home that make a constant full school day remote program impossible. Recognition of this issue by DESE, and the subsequent guidelines to districts to provide half-day instructional programs, provides us with an educational framework to work within that, appropriately reduced from the normal full day/week schedule. Likewise, the service capacity for special education is also reduced and being provided within this context of what is available and feasible.
Other districts are now providing virtual speech therapy. The state has waived regulations, the licensing board has waived training requirements - what is preventing Belmont from moving forward with this service?
The district is currently working with the speech therapists to see if the training requirement is something that is feasible for all of them to do, and trying to determine if telepractice is something that could be logistically provided by our staff given their individual circumstances. There are many other factors that come in to play to determine if students can be served with telepractice. These include the types of equipment needed, time available for sessions, materials required for service delivery, types of supports for facilitation at the student’s home, logistics around privacy and setting for staff members, etc. It is unfortunately not as simple as just providing a student and staff member access to a computer, camera and microphone.
Can you let the public know what the timeline and process are for budget analysis/modifications for the current fiscal year and for the upcoming year? It would be nice for parents to know at what points there will be publicly available information and when critical decisions will be made.
The April 14 and April 17 newsletters had budget information in them. We stated our School Committee Finance Subcommittee, along with the Warrant Committee Education Subcommittee, are meeting and discussing the impact of COVID-19 on FY20 and FY21 budgets. They will bring the topic to our full School Committee at the April 28 meeting. Additionally, the School Committee will be meeting "jointly" with the Select Board on April 27, 2020 where we will discuss the projected revenue shortfall for the Town and begin to discuss the impact on all Town departments including the schools. The School Committee will also be posting a Finance meeting for April 30 at 3:00 p.m. to further discuss the impact to the school department budget. Please note that these are open meetings via our remote meeting capacity with support from Belmont Media Center. The login information will always be posted on our website leading up to the meeting. Go to the tab named Committee and then to Notices and Agendas.
If at some point we were to purchase a device ourselves, could the district provide recommendations of what devices are most appropriate for different grade levels?
Please go to the technical support contact page on the BPS website to ask your questions.
When comparing 1st to 3rd grade (I have kids in both) having the use of Google Classroom in 3rd grade makes everything so much easier. It makes it easier on us parents to have everything centralized and to have an easy way to submit work back. It is helpful to be able to synchronize this work for families that have more than one child.
We don't currently have Google Classroom and Belmont Google accounts for students in grades K-2. We are exploring both that and other platforms. Google Classroom has potential and it also can be challenging for a younger student to navigate. We will continue to explore all options.