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Fallbrook High lays out plan for new school year

In a video presentation shared with students and parents at Fallbrook Union High School Friday, July 24, Ilsa Garza-Gonzalez, superintendent of FUHSD, outlined what school at Fallbrook Oasis and Ivy high schools will look like when school starts in August.

On July 17, Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered schools within the state of California located in counties on the COVID-19 watch list – and San Diego County is one of those counties – to begin the school year with distance learning.

"Like you, myself and the Fallbrook Union High School District community, Gov. Newsom and the California department of education concur that learning must resume," Garza-Gonzalez said in the video. "And if distance learning is our safest option, it must look very different from how it looked late spring."

Garza-Gonzalez said the district's reopening committee, which is made up of more than 30 members and consists of administrators, teachers, counselors and paraeducators, agreed the crisis response model used by the schools when they were forced to shut down, March 13, won't do this time around.

"Like you, they've asked for accountability for students, staff, rigor and learning," she said. "From March through June 2020, we were in crisis response mode. Distance learning, which will begin in the 2020-2021 school year, will look very different.

"Crisis response required teacher check-ins. In distance learning, we will have teacher-led instruction. Crisis response was unplanned and reactive to the situation that we were in. Distance learning is planned and purposeful," she said.

She continued to compare the two models to explain how much different the education will be presented to students when classes begin next month.

"We had paper, pencil packets and used technology as a tool for those students that had access to it," Garza-Gonzalez said. "In the distance learning model, technology will be integrated with proven pedagogy for all students. The crisis response model had suggested flexible daily requirements. Our days are now scheduled and planned. There was a hold harmless grading policy where students could not earn a grade lower than the grade that they had earned at the time the school shut down. Now, all assignments will be graded."

She said in the spring, the schools had no attendance requirement, but when school starts in August, attendance will be taken daily and students who fail to attend will undergo the established school attendance review team and school attendance review board process.

"There were no assessments previously and assessments are now fully integrated into courses," Garza-Gonzalez said. "We used Chromebooks, worksheets emailed and posted lessons and other outside sources. Now we will continue using our Chromebooks, but we will use board adopted standard spaced curriculum textbooks, Apex as the guaranteed digital curriculum for all students."

Before, Garza-Gonzalez said, the school was focused on review and restricted to the ability to teach new concepts.

"We will now return to learning where the focus will be on grade-level standards, learning loss, mitigation, cyclical, evaluation of curriculum and instruction, incorporating common assessments and data reflection and analysis," she said.

Garza-Gonzalez shared the committed established a theory of action: "If we create a safe, equitable, effective and programmatically diverse instructional model that is both, geographically fluid to account for the numerous uncertainties in the 2020-2021 school year, and rigorous and engaging then we will allow students to socially and academically collaborate in a safe manner where all students have a sense of ownership over their learning."

"We've established our floor and we are communicating it to you for, we know that inequities exist when we do not define and communicate our goals," she said.

Garza-Gonzalez explained that the committee has continued to build out three models for educating students this school year, displaying a PowerPoint presentation, mapping out the three models.

"The hybrid schedule, which is in the middle serves as the anchor for transitioning to either a traditional schedule or an online schedule," she said. "We realized that in these changing times we must be fluid. With hybrid schedule as our anchor, we can move back and forth at any given point during the year. Our online model is now fully developed."

The school day will begin at 9:10 a.m. Mondays through Thursdays and will consist of time in the day for what she called "4C Support," which is built-in time for teachers to create lessons, collaborate with colleagues, communicate with students and parents and connect with professional development opportunities.

"We've incorporated time for office hours, as well as an advisory period and opportunities for tutoring, a speaker series and club meetings," Garza-Gonzalez said. "Fridays will be considered our late start days. They include a mandatory advisory period for all students consisting of school announcements, social-emotional lessons, speakers hosted by the college and career center, ASB events and workshops dedicated time for club meetings. As we realize this is an important component of high school and tutoring support to mitigate learning loss as well as tutoring that will be mandated if academic progress is not being made.

Garza-Gonzalez said that the distance learning model will have all the classes normally offered at the school, including advanced sports classes, band, dance, choir, art, Associated Student Body, JROTC, agriculture and more Career and Technical Education classes.

"We are committed to giving our students the full high school experience that they deserve without interruption," she said. "We are also committed to making sure that all of our students have access to a digital curriculum. The digital curriculum will serve as the base for all learning. Apex Learning is proven and (has had) documented success at Fallbrook Union High School District. The curriculum has been used at Oasis High School for a number of years. We actually used Oasis High School as our model when creating a distance learning model for both Fallbrook High School and Ivy. Anytime, anywhere learning enhanced with structured teacher and whole class interaction structured scheduling to allow for a flipped classroom, increased teacher efficacy and personalized, active learning supports with scaffolding and supports.

"Apex Learning is created on proven pedagogy scaffolding, which is so important for our students. Supports including printable transcripts, text to speech and translation, interactive tools, and our digital learning is customizable so that courses can be adapted to align with the scope and sequence of the board approved courses and standards for Fallbrook Union High School District. Courses meet APG requirements, NCAA requirements and FUHSD graduation requirements."

Garza-Gonzalez explained that the district will support special education students with paraeducators that will be trained in the Apex Learning program and will work with small groups.

"Our goal is to have our case carriers as the advisory teacher for their caseload to provide a venue for weekly check-ins," she said. "Our English language learners will be supported through our bilingual paraeducators. That will be a part of the online community. Apex provides translation, which is another great source of support for our students. Students with poor or no internet connectivity will receive technology support to ensure that they are able to access the learning."

The superintendent said that students will receive lessons and guidance on cyber citizenship, navigating online learning and learning strategies to help them manage their time better.

"Our goal is to establish community learning centers as soon as it is allowed by the Department of Public Health," Garza-Gonzalez said.

Though the CIF San Diego Section promises to have a final schedule for sports to resume by Aug. 14, Garza-Gonzalez displayed a proposed timeline that included practice start dates beginning Dec. 14 and games commencing on or around the start of the new year.

CIF traditionally runs on a three-season schedule, but this year there will be only two with some sports moving to unfamiliar time frames and causing some athletes to have to choose which sports to participate in when usually, they would have the opportunity to participate in at least one each season.

"Obviously there are decisions that must be made both by our families and our department of athletics, as fields and what sports students will play will become an issue," Garza-Gonzalez said.

She said that breakfast and lunch will continue to be prodded to Fallbrook and Ivy high school students free of charge and more information will be made available soon. Ivy High will mirror what Fallbrook High is doing with a few minor adjustments and Oasis High will continue to commence as planned.

"We will have to change the way our science labs work to comply with health orders and students will now only be allowed to physically be present at Oasis High School during their regularly scheduled one-hour meeting time," Garza-Gonzalez explained. "Masks and symptom checks will be required of all students and staff."

The superintendent said the goal is to return to a brick and mortar learning setting.

"As soon as it is safe for both our students and our staff," Garza-Gonzalez said. "We will continue to further develop our hybrid schedule and our traditional schedule so that when we are given the OK to return to in-person learning, we are ready to continue to offer students a maximized learning experience without a loss of learning time."

She said that parents with questions and concerns should email [email protected] and a frequently asked questions section will be created at http://FUHSD.net.

Jeff Pack can be reached by email at [email protected].

 

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