Name: SF school district already flunked distance learning. Why haven’t officials spent the summer cramming to ace it?
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SF school district already flunked distance learning. Why haven’t officials spent the summer cramming to ace it?

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This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateIt’s the rare San Francisco public schoolkid, parent or teacher who thought our emergency experiment with distance learning in the spring went well. While everybody gave it a good old college try because they had no other choice, the overall results deserved a failing grade.While many teachers provided an enriching experience, others didn’t have technology skills or hardly interacted with kids in real time at all. Some kids lacked strong internet connections or family members with the time or know-how to help.Parents lucky enough to do their jobs from home grew exasperated trying to play teacher’s aide while working, feeling like they were failing at everything. Parents who had essential jobs outside the home were sometimes forced to leave small children by themselves all day.And guess what? Nothing much has changed in the past four months. When San Francisco public schools start up Aug. 17, its 55,000 from teachers who’ve been given no additional guidance from the school district since March on how to make virtual education successful.“Distance learning across the country was pretty much a failure,” said Mark Sanchez, president of the San Francisco school board. “We are struggling, and I’m looking to other districts that are doing it better than us.”But with just five weeks of summer left, teachers don’t know how many hours they’ll be required to teach or how much of it should be conducted in real time. There’s no plan to bring the neediest children back to campus despite everybody agreeing that should happen. The city has not figured out a plan for child care for parents who require it.“The sad fact, and nobody wants to say it out loud, is that if we continue with distance learning, the vast majority of students will not get anywhere near what they would get in the classroom,” Sanchez said. “That is doubly so for students who are already vulnerable.”Though the full plan won’t be presented to the school board until July 28, it’s nearly certain distance learning will continue for most kids indefinitely. A in advance of Tuesday’s school board meeting confirms the district intends to begin the school year with distance learning. Preparing facilities for even a hybrid model with some on-campus learning will take up to three months and will be considered only if coronavirus data improve.It’s unlikely even the neediest children — including English learners, foster kids and kindergartners — will start school face-to-face with their teachers as the school board had hoped, Sanchez said.He added that special education students needing occupational therapy or physical therapy may not get it because that’s hard to deliver over a computer, and school districts are expecting lawsuits from parents because of it.But despite these grim realities, San Francisco Unified has little choice but to continue distance learning. While other Bay Area districts are attempting to reopen schools in various fashions, San Francisco has gathered just 1 out of every 8 thermometers and containers of hand soap it needs and also lacks wipes, disinfectant, gloves, masks and other supplies. Many teachers and some parents understandably don’t feel safe attempting to return to school.More by Heather KnightI don’t how anybody in super-rich, high-tech, innovative San Francisco can read this without wanting to scream or cry or both. It didn’t have to be this way.What if we had a president willing to bail out public school districts alongside corporations, airlines and banks? What if schools had been treated as essential places like hospitals and grocery stores from the start, with just as much money and effort spent on making them as safe as Safeway?What if the state of California added more money to schools because of the COVID-19 pandemic rather than less? What if the San Francisco Unified School District had run full-throttle out of the gate back in March to ensure virtual learning worked and we had enough supplies to open as soon as it’s safe to do so? Instead, its working groups began meeting June 24, and the one charged with the logistics of reopening didn’t convene until July 1.What if the school board had agreed to allow Superintendent Vince Matthews to spend up to $93,000 from a private grant to hire a consultant to craft a sensible plan rather than ideologically rejecting the idea because the consultant had previously worked with charter schools? Matthews told the board in June when it rebuffed his idea that he had no backup plan and the rejection would be “a body blow.” Alison Collins, a school board member who voted against hiring the consultant, said she stands by that decision because it would have “wasted money and is work that central office leaders should be directly involved in.” The grant money was used for other purposes.What if San Francisco had coordinated with districts around California rather than each one re-creating the wheel and coming up with entirely different answers? What if the district had learned from the Boys and Girls Clubs, the YMCA and the Recreation and Park Department? In their child care programs and summer camps since March, there has been no reported case of a child contracting the coronavirus. Two staff members across all three agencies fell sick from community transmission and went into quarantine. Several hundred children participated in the three programs combined.But none of those sensible ideas happened — not even close.And now we’re stuck with a scenario we know isn’t going to work for anybody.Laura Dudnick, a spokeswoman for the school district, said district staff has been meeting regularly to discuss the new school year for months and has been actively engaging families through town halls and surveys to ascertain their wishes.“The district is engaged in defining a number of elements in terms of teaching and learning for the 2020-21 school year while prioritizing the safety of students, families and staff,” she wrote in an email.An agenda from the district’s logistics work group to figure out how to reopen schools shows some dire forecasts. A full return to school Aug. 17 and a hybrid option with kids in class a few days a week were both deemed not feasible. Starting either option Jan. 5 for the spring semester was rated “possibly feasible.” Even waiting to bring kids back until August 2021 was not a sure bet, described as “most likely feasible.”That’s terrible news for Jennifer Moless, a kindergarten teacher at Serra Elementary in Bernal Heights. In 2013, she was named by Mayor Ed Lee as one of five Teachers of the Year, but in the spring, she felt like a failure.“I was bad at my job all spring, and I’m dreading another year of feeling that way,” Moless said. “I think it’s going to be a disaster.”Granted, nothing’s easy about working, let alone thriving, during the COVID-19 pandemic. But Moless has to welcome 23 little 5-year-olds to their first day of real school over a computer screen. She has to get to know them without the usual orientations. She has to figure out how to communicate with their families, many of whom speak little English and lack strong internet connections. She has to teach them social skills without being able to interact in person.At least by March, she’d already formed strong bonds with her kids and their parents. In August, those won’t exist.Her computer will be perched on a vanity in her bedroom, the only place she can get a strong enough Internet connection to make virtual teaching work. Her partner, an essential worker for the post office with a night shift, will have to sleep on the couch. She asked to use her classroom, which is large and has big windows, to do her virtual teaching, but said that is prohibited. She’d like some way to communicate with kindergarten teachers around the district to share ideas, but no such platform exists.Moless is not the only one feeling long on stress and short on answers.Parents went nuts in the spring trying to work from home while entertaining and educating their children. Kids were lonely, bored and sad. Many are regressing academically and socially, particularly English learners who lack someone at home with whom to practice their new language, according to teachers. Teachers reported many children of essential workers being left at home by themselves or with siblings because their parents had to earn money. Some families fell off the educational grid entirely.Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Area’s largest water districts.Dr. Kara Wright works as a pediatrician at Tenderloin Community School. She said that during wellness checks in the spring, parents reported feeling anxious, their children were acting out and not sleeping or eating well, and families had a hard time maintaining strong enough internet connections to make distance learning successful.“For a majority of our families, it was a struggle to keep it going consistently and to have good, regular engagement with their teachers,” she said. “I’m not sure how we can keep kids home for another semester. I really do worry about that — there was already a big achievement gap, and this is amplifying all of that.”Superintendent Matthews said at a virtual family town hall Wednesday: “The learning that previously took place doesn’t come close to what we want and what we expect. ... We know we need to do a better job.”The district, to its credit, got computers and internet hotspots into the hands of thousands of kids and will continue to do so this fall. Collins said she wants the district to focus on improving distance learning and getting more devices to kids rather than focusing on how to reopen safely because doing both at the same time is slowing the planning process.Concerns about distance learning motivated this fall. in which kids are in school part of the time and learning from home part of the time.In San Francisco, the teachers union contract with the district expired June 30, and there was no date as of Thursday scheduled for both sides to meet, according to Susan Solomon, president of the United Educators of San Francisco. There’s been no discussion about how many hours teachers will be required to work each day, whether they’ll need to teach live versus posting links and videos, or how they’ll get the most vulnerable kids back to campus soon. The old contract continues until a new agreement is reached.Solomon said distance learning is the right move for health and safety, but she acknowledged there hasn’t been much planning to make it work and that the district hasn’t “moved as fast as they could.”“We feel very strongly that we have to improve distance learning in many different ways. This is new to all of us,” she said. “I’m sorry to say there are no firm plans right now. I wish I had more answers, but at this point I don’t.”Parents also want to know what their options for child care are. In the virtual town hall meeting with Matthews, scores of participants said their greatest concern with distance learning is that children would be left home alone all day because their parents need to work. A spokeswoman for the Recreation and Park Department said the goal is to offer programs for kids who aren’t in school like they offered in the spring for essential workers, but she had no details on where they’ll take place or when parents can sign up for them.Supervisor Matt Haney, co-chair of the city’s working group on children and families during the COVID-19 pandemic, said city departments have been in a holding pattern on how to help as the school district forms a plan. It’s hard to plan for child care without knowing how schoolkids’ days will be structured. But with the start of the school year closing in, he said, they can no longer wait.“We need to get out of that holding pattern very quickly,” he said. “It’s time to fly. It’s time to move. The clock has been ticking.”Haney would like the city to take over empty school buildings to provide child care, but admitted there’s been no conversation with the school district about the idea.Dave Alexander, who has an incoming second-grader, said in the spring there was just one hour per week of interaction on the computer between his 7-year-old son and his teacher. He’s worried there’s been no effort to make that better.“They were treading water before, barely getting by, and now they’re in real deep trouble,” he said of the school district. “People in the community have ideas. They want to help.“Come on, we’re San Francisco,” he continued. “Let’s try. Let’s get creative for our kids.”San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: Twitter:Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Area’s largest water districts.

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateIt’s the rare San Francisco public schoolkid, parent or teacher who thought our emergency experiment with distance learning in the spring went well. While everybody gave it a good old college try because they had no other choice, the overall results deserved a failing grade.While many teachers provided an enriching experience, others didn’t have technology skills or hardly interacted with kids in real time at all. Some kids lacked strong internet connections or family members with the time or know-how to help.Parents lucky enough...

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San Francisco bureau chief for the New York Times; former columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and co-host of #TotalSF podcast; proud to call SF home

Heather Knight

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SF school district already flunked distance learning. Why haven’t officials spent the summer cramming to ace it?

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