Singh updates FUESD board, community on plan for reopening in the fall

Fallbrook Union Elementary School District Superintendent Candace Singh updated FUESD’s governing board and parents in the district on plans for how to reopen schools this fall.

Singh told the board that at this point, while many things can change in the coming months, the district is continuing to work on two plans for classes in the coming school year: an in-person option with “considerable” safety protocols, as well as an online-only option for parents who are not comfortable having their children return to physical classrooms.

Singh said district staff have been conducting surveys of parents on what options they would be interested in for their students returning to classes and found overwhelming support in restarting in-person learning if it can be done safely.

“88% of them shared that their interest was hoping that their kids would return to school five days a week,” Singh said. “A majority of parents shared with us that they would be interested in a blending model if we can’t open school full time.”

The superintendent said she believes the district can get to a point where students can be safely educated in an in-person setting, with appropriate health precautions.

“I want to mention here as we get started that we all know, just as in our own daily lives, that there is some level of risk,” Singh said. “When we go to the market or we go out into the community and do the things that we need to do, there is some level of risk when our staff and students come back, and knowing that, our absolute No. 1 priority is the health and well-being of our students and our staff.”

In planning for a return to classes, Singh said teams of district staff and community members have been working to put together a way to make in-person learning work.

“We have had over 100 people working with us for the last eight weeks or so in all of these different planning teams,” Singh said, “and these teams have included our teachers, our principals, our support staff, parents, members of our community and we have been thinking thoroughly and in what manner we should open our schools.”

Singh said one reason district staff believe they will be able to safely restart in-person learning is they are making a commitment to keep class sizes as low as possible.

Classes will be limited to 24 students in grades K-3, 26 students in grades 4-6 and 28 students in grades 7-8, according to Singh.

“Depending on the number of kids who go to our online program, those numbers might be even lower,” Singh said.

Part of the way the district is going to do that, she said, is by hiring more teachers – FUESD has already committed to about $1 million more in salary spending for new teachers.

“We’ve added an additional teacher or two to every school in the upper grades, several more at (Potter Jr. High School) because creating a master schedule is different than just creating grade levels of teachers,” Singh said.

She said many of the district’s instructional coaches will go back into classrooms to assist in the effort to teach during the pandemic.

“Almost all of them have gone back to the classroom, in addition to other teachers we have hired or are in the process of hiring to maintain these class sizes,” Singh said.

However, because of the limited class sizes, she said she wanted to come out upfront and let parents know that they may not be able to move their students into in-person classes if they initially choose to have them learn online.

“There would be no guarantee there would be space,” Singh said. “So, we’re not going to over promise the world here.”

Singh said for students whose parents choose the online learning option, teachers will build off of ways they kept their students immersed in their curriculum during distance learning at the end of the last school year.

“(The teachers) were making those personal phone calls every week and we were so grateful for that,” Singh said.

The superintendent also said the district was considering implementing a slightly shortened school day, based on typical early release schedules, in which “we send kids home with their lunch and breakfast (for the next morning) so that we’re minimizing these opportunities for gatherings and how to supervise these kids all spread out.”

She said that plan would likely include something she called a “super snack” – an extended nutritional break and recess for students.

“One of the commitments that we’re making is to minimize movement, minimize large movements, so you can kind of envision what it might look like would be a rotating, or kind of a rolling recess,” Singh said, “where kids in small groups are going – stable groups, right? And then they might have play domes at school, on the playground. They’d be really spread out across the school.”

Will Fritz can be reached by email at [email protected].