Headed into the fourth week of campus closures, Arkansas educators are expanding and revising their efforts to teach, feed and give emotional support to the more than 479,000 students who are all but homebound by the coronavirus pandemic.
Students have now exhausted the previously prepared 10 days of what are called "AMI lessons" or alternative methods of instruction lessons that were initially prepared digitally and on paper for them to do at home in consultation with their teachers.
That's caused school system leaders and teachers across the state to search out new lessons and maybe better ways to deliver those lessons, as well as school meals, to students who have now been out of school buildings since at least March 17 if not longer. The governor has directed that the school buildings be closed to in-person instruction at least through April 17.
In the 2,200-student Watson Chapel district and in other parts of Jefferson County, buses newly equipped with broadband boosters and routers will be strategically parked throughout school systems to give students with devices the ability to connect to the internet so they can do online assignments.
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Jerry Guess, superintendent of the Watson Chapel system, on Friday credited the Arkansas River Valley Education Service Cooperative with initiating and helping its member districts to equip the buses.
Guess' district, which will deploy 10 such buses, also has purchased 100 "hot spots" to enable staff members who have been without home access to the internet the ability to now connect virtually with at least some of their students.
Despite the efforts to get as many students online as possible, the district is still preparing packages of lessons and assignments on paper for delivery to those without electronic devices.
"This is not a normal situation," Guess said about the pandemic, school building closures and directives from the top levels of state and federal government for physical distancing. "There are not rules for this year," the veteran superintendent said.
In the Russellville School District, Superintendent Mark Gotcher said faculty members have discovered that in addition to providing online and packets of lessons they can load educational material on to thumb drives, which students can then plug into a computer device and do some digital learning -- even if they aren't able to connect to the internet.
And the Russellville staff members have scrambled to get computer devices into the hands of students who don't have ready access at home.
"I've told my director of technology, 'Anything we can unplug and put in the hands of kids, please do,'" Gotcher said. "We found out that there were about 100 kids in our fifth grade building that did not have devices so we got them those. And our junior high [staff members] unplugged all the devices they had that could go home and created a system for pickup and, if necessary, delivery [to students].
Online access to lessons is a challenge in districts in Pulaski County, the state's most populous and urban county.
Jessica Duff, a spokeswoman for the Pulaski County Special School District that annually provides a Chromebook for every student in third-through-12th grades and iPads for younger children, said some students have difficulty accessing internet service from their homes.
The Pulaski County Special district like others in the state has tried to inform parents of low and no-cost internet services that are currently available from communication companies.
Staff members in the North Little Rock School and Jacksonville/North Pulaski school districts this week have lent out what the North Little Rock district said were "hundreds" of laptops to families. The Conway School District in neighboring Faulkner County also checked out Chromebooks on Friday to families who either had no devices or an insufficient number of devices, and plans call for the Little Rock School District to do the same Monday.
Quantifying the numbers of students and families who can't access the internet is difficult.
"In some areas there are some significant gaps that are concerning," said Scott Smith, executive director of the nonprofit Arkansas Public School Resource Center that targets support primarily to charter and rural school systems,
Smith said said the state in recent years "has done a pretty good job of making sure that schools have access and that there's enough internet capacity. It's a different thing to talk about every home and every location having access," he said.
Kimberly Mundell, a spokeswoman for the state's Division of Elementary and Secondary Education, said deficient numbers of devices and inadequate accessibility to the internet were expected. For that reason, she said, education division leaders partnered with the state's public television system, Arkansas PBS, to provide programming and lesson guides for kindergarten through eighth graders. That started last Monday.
"While some households do not have technology, most have access to a television, and Arkansas PBS is a free local station," Mundell said in an email response to questions.
The response to the collaboration between the education division and the public television network "has been incredible," she said.
Educators can sign up to receive the packets in their email and they can choose to use all or portions of the resources. Parents can use the programming and lessons as an addition to other assignments for their children.
"Fortunately, districts are the most aware of the specific needs of their student populations and have worked in partnership with local businesses and [the state agency] to help make sure student learning continues," Mundell said. "We can't stress enough how proud we are of Arkansas educators, parents and students for their commitment to learning during this time."
Mundell's sentiments were echoed by the superintendents of the Watson Chapel and Russellville school systems. Both said their teachers have been busy calling, emailing and texting their students to help with lessons but even more so to check on their well-being and to attempt to ease the anxiety and stress that students are feeling as a result of national and state events related to the pandemic
Gotcher said he's heard it said, and he believes, that school administrators need to "get out of the way," because teachers "are the most creative souls in the state and they know what to do."
Districts in the state are using a variety of lessons for their students.
The Little Rock district, for example, will begin next week to use the itsLearning and Edmentum digital learning platforms to teach core academic courses. Elective courses for the most part are being discontinued. Teachers of elective courses will be teamed up with core teachers to help support online instruction and communication with students, said Pamela Smith, a spokeswoman for the district. Students enrolled in Advanced Placement and concurrent college credit courses will continue to receive instruction directly from their teachers and will not be using Edmentum in those subjects.
Watson Chapel teachers have developed their own lessons for their students but may use the Arkansas PBS lessons and other resources to supplement them.
In Russellville, staff members have developed "learning tasks" in two-week chunks for students.
The district is adhering to the advice of state education leaders to focus on "maintaining and engaging" students in educational activities and not necessarily introducing new and challenging concepts. The learning tasks promote family involvement and good mental health.
"We're shifting from educators to mental health advisers and mental health counselors. We're making sure that the kids are being healthy," Gotcher said.
The districts also are working to feed students, many of whom rely on schools for regular meals.
Gotcher said his district served 4,100 meals on Friday in a district of 5,200 students. His district is attempting to reduce the exposure food-service and other employees have by going from a five-day to a two-day-a-week distribution of meals. Each distribution would provide as many as 10 meals to an individual student, he said.
The Watson Chapel district started its meal program by asking students to pick up the meals. Seventy-five to 80 meals were served each day that way. Earlier this week the district began delivering meals to central locations, resulting in 515 lunches and 450 breakfasts being distributed.
"I sent the staff a letter today to try to encourage them," Guess said Friday. "The basic message was that these are times like we have never seen before, but the thing is people are working harder and smarter than ever before."
Metro on 04/04/2020