The Eagle Grove Area School District teachers and administration have been working diligently to try and figure out what the new “normal” will be in education now that Governor Kim Reynolds announced last week that schools would not be allowed to reopen before the end of the school year.
“We will continue with our voluntary education model and encourage all parents to encourage their students to participate,” said Superintendent Jess Toliver.
For roughly the last two weeks, students have been given projects/assignments to work on either online with their Chromebooks or through paper packets that were delivered to students. Teachers have also been available to answer questions as needed. However, Toliver said the participation rate of the voluntary study program is not as quite as high as they had hoped.
This online/paper packet instruction will continue through the original last day of school – May 22. As far as how grades will go into record, however, are still under consideration.
“We are also looking at going to a pass/fail model which we have not decided on but might do for the second semester. That way the semester will not affect grade point averages.”
Toliver also addressed the top two questions on the minds of Eagle Grove High School students…Prom and Graduation.
“If social distancing restrictions are lifted before May 22, we will see what we can do about rescheduling Prom,” he said. “However, I don’t think that’s realistic right now, but we will wait and see.”
As for graduation, something will for sure take place, they just don’t know exactly what yet. Toliver said there has been some discussion with options thrown out to hold a drive-through graduation ceremony; do individual ceremonies for each of the students; hold an extremely limited ceremony to meet social distancing guidelines; or moving it to sometime this summer in hopes that restrictions will be lifted – but noting that many kids work summer jobs and families go on vacation, so that could be difficult as well. To aid in the decision, Toliver said they will be meeting with the senior class officers to get their input. When a decision is made it will be announced.
The school district is also focusing on how to reintroduce students back into the classroom next year. We’ve all heard about the “Summer Slide” knowing that students lose a bit of knowledge when they are not in the classroom; well that is a very real possibility in this COVID-19 situation, only on a more dramatic level after students have been out because of the quarantine.
“We’ve never missed a quarter of the school year before,” said Toliver.
This is of most concern for the lower grade levels, and even middle school kids he noted. As a result, he again encourages parents to have their students work on this year’s voluntary learning models at home. In addition, when they go back to school in August, Toliver said the teachers are already planning to spend the better part of the first month simply picking up from where the students left off this year as the at-home lessons they are doing now were designed to help students maintain what they had been taught, not learn new material.
With that being said, Toliver said the district has looked into the option of holding summer school but no decision on that has been made yet as they will have to wait for state guidance on something like that. As for starting early this fall instead, Toliver said he believes this is probably not the best option, one of those reasons being he would run into contract issues with teachers and it could end up having a financial impact on both the school and the families. Another problem is that families are often gone on vacation in early August.
“We want to make sure we do this right…so we will most likely begin classes on our originally scheduled start date for next year and just work to catch the kids up from there,” said Toliver.
Another issue Toliver and the school district are facing is how to help those students who will be in a “transition year” for the 2020-2021 school year. These include preschoolers going into kindergarten; fourth grade elementary students going into fifth grade middle school; and eighth grade middle schoolers going into the high school for the ninth grade. Typically, these students are given tours of the new buildings they will be in, meet some of the teachers, and ask questions. Toliver reassures any of these students that they will not be forgotten. The details are still being worked out, but each grade will have a scheduled night where they and their parents come in for orientation. Toliver anticipates it will be sometime between registration and the start of school.
