New Albany schools to continue virtual classes through summer session, plan multi-part graduation ceremonies

New Albany officials were not surprised by the governor’s decision to keep schools closed through the end of the year, especially in light of the number of COVID-19 deaths in the state topping 4,000. They have been preparing for it.

Dr. Lance Evans

“If you put kids back in school and wind up with a dozen cases across the state you would just create mass hysteria,” New Albany School Superintendent Dr. Lance Evans said.

Having illness among students is not uncommon but the pandemic climate would likely cause an overreaction.

“We have kids in our elementary school go home every day with fever because, you know, they’ve got something going on,” he said. “Kids get sick.”

Educators were already planning to continue distance learning, just in case, along with end-of-year contingency plans.

“We’re rolling on well with our virtual school and we’re still going to have all our awards ceremonies,” he said. “We’re going to do them virtually. They will be on the original dates for which they were scheduled.”

That includes graduation, if not in a fully traditional sense.

“It’s very important to seniors,” Evans said. “It’s also important to sixth-graders.”

He said not just seniors need that sense of closure as they make the transition from one educational level to another.

“Sometimes as adults we don’t think in the realm of a child,” he said. “These kids may be thinking ‘I’m never going to see my kindergarten teacher again.’ Even though they’re in the same building.”

“You know, I’ve worked hard all year to get that perfect attendance and now I don’t get my name called,” he said, “so it’s worth all the effort on our part to make that happen. I think our city is very appreciative of it.”

New Albany schools probably will mark graduation in two parts.

“What we plan on doing is on the 22^nd (May 22, the scheduled day for graduation ceremonies) doing a celebration, I guess would be the best thing to call it,” he said. “We would be doing a car parade that would go around each campus and then end at the high school with a CDC-approved, if you will, graduation pickup of their caps and gowns,” Evans said. “Then, on the 31^st of July we’ll have our traditional ceremony.”

It will be on the football field as usual, weather permitting.

“We’ve reached out to all our physicians here in town and they felt like June was probably too early but they felt like July would be safe,” he said.

That would be before universities start for the fall so there would be no conflict. “The only people we might miss might be in boot camp,” he said. We will do something obviously to honor them. Every year we have students who join the military.”

Now that the governor has said schools will be closed, education officials have a better idea what they need to work with.

Evans said his was meeting this past Friday afternoon with his administrative team concerning summer classes.

“That’s where we’re making decisions on moving forward on how summer school’s going to work as far as remediation is concerned,” he said.

“We will have our traditional summer school-type deal in addition to the remediation piece that we will send out,” Evans said. “We were already looking at transitioning our summer school to a virtual platform before this happened.”

“We will go ahead and push ahead with that plan. But the difference will be with the remediation, the way that will look and we don’t have that completely hashed out yet,” he said.

“We’re bringing in a committee of teachers to work with the administrators to outline what does the summer look like. What does the start of the school year look like and what does remediating kids at the start of the school year look like. How long? How much? What standards?” he said.

The district has an advantage in that all classes already use tablets and computers.

“We’re lucky because only about five percent of our students didn’t have internet access and we’ve given out over 40 hot spots and put our buses out,” he said. The district has parked school buses with publically-accessible wifi hotspots at strategic locations around town.

“We’ve given out packets to students where a hot spot wouldn’t work,” Evans said. “There are places where you’re just not going to have cell phone service and it doesn’t matter how good your hot spot is.”

“We’re doing everything possible we can to meet the meets of all students,” he said.

The district’s virtual classrooms use Google Meet software.

“It’s the same platform as Zoom,” he said. “We have about 20 kids in the classroom, and the teacher, and everybody sees everybody. It’s brought a sense of normalcy back for our students. They get to see their friends, their teachers.”

“That’s that thing where we as adults have kind of moved past that idea, that thought process of I miss seeing my teacher or I miss seeing my friends,” he said. “You know we don’t necessarily think in that context anymore like young children do.”

“And I think parents have really appreciated the virtual school because it’s created a sense of normalcy and schedule, if you will, for our kids, our students,” he said. “But also they know they are continuing to learn.”

Having the technology is important but is not the answer in itself.

“The thing is also the teachers understanding how to use it,” Evans said. “You know you can have it, but if you’re not careful it turns into a glorified Netbook.”

“But you know the fact that we have trained our teachers like we have – and this isn’t like a brag session but it’s a fact – that to train the teachers the way they have trained them to leverage the technology is probably 90 percent of the success, of the reason we are successful because they understand how to use it,” he said.

The New Albany district is taking its distant learning to a new wider level: broadcast television.

“WTVA reached out to us and we’re doing an educational segment on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30 to 10 a.m.,” he said. It started Tuesday this week and Evans said they actually already had Tuesday and Thursday filmed and edited.”

Each segment starts off with an introduction to teachers. “And it’s our teachers that are doing it,” he said. “I don’t know whether you’ve seen the one Tupelo does. If you go on the WTVA app you can see theirs, they have them logged.”

The first New Albany segment was to be two math teachers doing an explanation of ACT test-taking strategies for math. “And then they do several ACT practice math problems. And we have a daily tech tip of the day,” he said. “This one focused on joining a Zoom or a Google Meet.”

Next they have a middle school teacher who did a lesson on coding. “They all tied it back to a website called code.org, which is a free website which they can use to leverage that instruction they got and go use the website,” Evans said. “It’s very useful information. It’s something that every student in the entire region can use and benefit from. We’re not standing up there teaching a geometry class, you know.”

“We also feature something that we’re doing on a teacher in each one of these,” he added, “so they’re about 26 to 28 minutes of content.”

The televised classes are expected to continue through the end of the school year and possibly the summer. “We’re going to keep going as long as they want,” Evans said. “We will stop when they tell us to stop.”

While some things are still to be decided, Evans said that summer will emphasize remediation. The grab-and-go meal service will continue through the end of the year, but a decision for the summer was not ready.

Evans expects more certainty soon.

“Maybe in the next two weeks, decisions will slow down because things will be in play, if you will, more so,” he said. He added that what works for one district may not work for another.

“In every school district it looks different,” he said. “People in some districts may well operate like we do. Others may not. They have to take what resources they have and formulate the best plan they can.”

“We’ll make it. Maybe it’s going to take awhile to recover from it. We don’t have a choice but to make it,” Evans said. “We gripe about it but the bottom line is we’ve got to take care of business in the end.”