Board says teachers, students should not have to endure simultaneous online, in-person instruction

With a little more than two weeks before students begin the fall semester, the Hawaii Board of Education Thursday directed public school officials to formulate a distance learning plan that board members pledged would not require educators to teach students online and in-person at the same time.

The details about whether and how to provide virtual options to students whose families are still leery about sending their children back to classrooms have been left to individual schools and principals, with little guidance at the state or complex area levels. So board members asked the HIDOE to come up with solutions before students start school on Aug. 3. Teachers return to classrooms July 28.

BOE Chair Catherine Payne said, “I do apologize that we are at this point so close to the opening of school when we are still trying to get some clarification on this.”

“It is vital to us that we offer options to families so that we don’t lose our students from our public school system that we’re continuing to be able to provide for them which I do believe is our obligation,” Payne said.

The state’s 15 complex areas can temporarily deploy staff, such as assigning one teacher to virtually teach students grouped from several smaller schools within the same complex, Payne said, echoing the suggestions made by Hawaii State Teachers Association President Osa Tui, Jr., two weeks ago.

Tui told the BOE Thursday, “Parents are in a terrible dilemma deciding between the safety and the education of their unvaccinated children.”

“Efforts should have been made months ago to take the burden off of schools to solve these problems in isolation,” Tui said.

“If they (families) pull their children out, schools will see an even further reduction in their operating budgets and lose personnel after the school year has begun,” Tui added. “If students are reallocated within the system, funds for those students would also be reallocated per the weighted student formula.”

While Schools Superintendent Christina Kishimoto has repeatedly advocated about the need to return to full in-person instruction by the new school year and some principals have told families there will be no distance learning at their schools, parents, HSTA and other education advocates have increasingly called for online learning options.

Bryan Costa’s daughter is about to enter the third grade at Kaimiloa Elementary in Ewa. She has type-1 diabetes, he said.

Costa told board members he contacted his daughter’s principal and complex area superintendent and was “severely disappointed to see that they were expecting my child to be in school yet the CDC (the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) says my daughter is at high risk.”

“I was also offered an online course that was basically software with no teacher involvement, no teacher oversight and was devastated when I was informed that they tried this system last year and there was a 90-percent failure rate,” last school year, Costa said.

HIDOE to unveil distance learning plans Wednesday, less than 2 weeks before students are scheduled to return to classrooms

A BOE resolution directing the HIDOE to assemble a distance learning plan by July 29 passed unanimously Thursday during the special board meeting about the 2021-22 school year. In addition, the resolution requires that the department maintain a list of schools that plan to offer distance learning.

Kishimoto said the HIDOE would post the information online by next Wednesday, July 21, along with contact information for families who want to switch their children to different schools through a geographic exemption, known as a GE.

“Each complex has a distance learning plan and those plans are based on school principal input to the complex area and had to be approved by the complex area superintendent,” Kishimoto told the BOE.

“The good news is that the demand is low so that allows us to stretch our capacity to that demand,” Kishimoto said, telling board members only one to two percent of families polled in complex areas are seeking full virtual learning option, with just one complex area reaching higher distance learning interest of five percent.

“We are working with families to do this,” Kishimoto said.

“Every time we assign a teacher to provide a distance option, that removes a teacher from in-person classroom opportunities. We certainly are not looking to increase the number of students in classes, and so it’s a careful balancing act of how we can stretch the capacity that we have,” Kishimoto said, adding, “We have a fixed number of teachers that we’re working with.”

Payne, the BOE chair, told her colleagues, “The real concern that continues to be an issue is the lack of clarity that seems to be out there among schools and school staff, and certainly with board members and families that are contacting board members.”

Payne noted that the education department is receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government that can be used for measures to keep schools operating during the COVID-19 outbreak.

BOE says no more ‘Zoom and room’ simultaneous instruction

Board members clarified that their resolution does not direct teachers to simultaneously teach kids online as well as in-person, which made it hard for students to learn and difficult for teachers to teach to the best of their abilities. Numerous educators from across the state decried the dreaded “Zoom and room” approach during the BOE meeting, saying it was overwhelming and didn’t serve students’ needs.

Rebecca Hadley-Schlosser, a special education teacher at Nanaikapono Elementary on Oahu’s Leeward coast, told the BOE, “Having to teach students in two different formats simultaneously was hard. It took almost twice as long to get through a lesson than if I had only one modality to teach.”

“I felt like I was running a race with no end in sight,” she said.

Nathan Reyes Oda, a special education teacher at Ewa Makai Middle, testified about the devoted teacher of his special education child who was burdened by simultaneous instruction last school year.

“He was a younger man from the mainland and loved Hawaii and with every intention of making this place his home. He loved the kids in the class,” Reyes Oda said.

When special education students were allowed back on campus during the pandemic, he told the BOE meeting, “This guy had kids in class and online in five different grade levels, ages five to nine. A non-verbal kid who was in a wheelchair and diaper, various kids with ADHD and autism. This is a nightmare. Nobody should be learning like this.”

“He quit and moved back to the mainland. He’s still a teacher. We lost a good one,” Reyes Oda said.

“We already have a teacher shortage crisis. Forcing teachers to teach both in-person and online causes more than just job dissatisfaction. It causes good teachers to quit,” he concluded.

Tai Baird, a special education teacher at Lihikai Elementary School on Maui, said much of last school year was a disaster, and she urged the board to push for only one mode of instruction for teachers.

“Please do not create this nightmare for us again,” she said. “Too many of our teachers have retired, resigned, left the island due to the multiple tasking of instruction.”

Payne, the BOE chair, responded to teachers’ concerns and said, “The board has heard very clearly and observed for ourselves over the past year how challenging it was for teachers to do both in-person and online instruction simultaneously.”

BOE member Bruce Voss, whose wife is a public school teacher, agreed.

Simultaneous instruction “just creates an undue burden on teachers, takes time and attention from students in the classroom and dilutes in-classroom learning.”

Families who want their children to engage in distance learning may still have access to a fully virtual program purchased by the HIDOE from a private company called Stride K12 if their school offers that option. But it’s mostly self-directed, without a Hawaii-based teacher monitoring them, offering feedback or answering questions.

The HIDOE spent $1.2 million to purchase 5,000 K12/Stride licenses for the period running from June 3 through May 31, 2022, Honolulu Civil Beat reported. The program’s content has been approved by HIDOE curriculum specialists for grades K-8.

Stride replaces Acellus, an online curriculum HIDOE discontinued after numerous complaints about its inappropriate, offensive and outdated content.

Voss, the BOE member said, “The request for distance learning at the complex or state level is not just for a sterile program like the Acellus disaster last year. It suggests or wants an actual teacher to provide feedback to those students.”

Superintendent outlines distance learning expectations

As schools are interacting with families that want distance learning, Kishimoto said the state has clarified expectations. First, the student has to be able to be successful in distance learning, giving the principal the final say in making that determination. HIDOE has set up a system so that parents have to agree to distance learning expectations for students, including attending regularly, completing their work, etc.

Second, a student who opts for distance learning has to be able to receive their wraparound services, such as mandated special education and language services, Kishimoto said.

‘We are committed to providing distance learning. We are also committed to not overwhelming teachers in the classroom by increasing students in order to pull out teachers for distance learning, so we have that fixed capacity,” Kishimoto said.

Families that have a medical reason for a child to not attend school have various options, including home hospital placement, 504 (the law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance) protections and a 504 plan for home-based learning, she added.

Within complex areas, schools which have extra distance learning capacity are able to accept some geographic exceptions, Kishimoto said.