Distance learning for fall term is ‘legitimate concern,’ superintendent says

For every teacher the state dedicates to distance learning when students return to class in August, it would need to pull a teacher out of the classroom, state Schools Superintendent Christina Kishimoto said Tuesday.

Kishimoto, who is departing as superintendent at the end of the month, answered questions live on Hawaii Public Radio’s The Conversation program, which also featured portions of an interview with Hawaii State Teachers Association President Osa Tui, Jr., who raised concerns about a lack of distance learning options for families when most students return to school on Aug. 3.

Tui said, “Without access to vaccinations, there are a lot of parents who are rightfully concerned about possible spread of the virus to their children. And right now, there’s no state setup option for those parents to give their children a distance learning option.

“Last year, the DOE surveyed all parents and said, ‘OK, which of you want to keep your kids home and which don’t?’ They didn’t make an effort to do that this summer and so schools are left scrambling. I’ve talked to principals who see me and they ask me, ‘So what’s the plan?’ And I really don’t have any answer to that,” Tui added.

Kishimoto responded by saying that Tui’s “concern is a legitimate concern raised by others as well. Many of our parents have been asking for our schools to reopen and to normalize schedules to the greatest degree possible and to have students back with their peers and with teachers and with principals and other staff members.”

It’s a concern also raised by Kishimoto’s boss, Board of Education Chair Catherine Payne, who wrote in a memo that she wants the board to “direct the superintendent to consider the feasibility of offering distance learning at the state or complex-area levels.”

The board will discuss several school reopening issues at a special meeting, Thursday, July 15, at 9 a.m.

“We are going to have some families that are not comfortable yet. By virtue of this being a health pandemic, we should expect that,” Kishimoto told Hawaii Public Radio Tuesday.

Kishimoto said each of the 15 complex areas across the state have been ”planning for and examining their capacity to offer distance learning options by school and by complex area. Those are options that each parent should be reaching out to their own school to see what’s available.”

“We do not have an increase in the number of teacher positions as we go into next school year which means that in order to open up all classrooms, there is not an extra set of teachers to then work via distance learning. And so capacity-wise, we need greater capacity to be able to offer that,” Kishimoto added.

HIDOE has entered into a contract with a publicly traded company called Stride K12, Kishimoto said, “an online program where we can offer some limited opportunities for those parents who want to opt for a longer period of time out of school and learning via technology. The caution I have around that is to make sure your child can be successful via that learning approach because we know many students did struggle with that and especially if you don’t have a teacher that is directly teaching that distance learning class.”

“It’s a capacity challenge for us, and it’s one that we’re working through,” she said.

“Even with a quality online curriculum, we still need to have teachers involved with grading, checking in with students, ensuring that they are progressing appropriately, that they are doing the full scope. We don’t want students losing more instructional time this year,” Kishimoto said.

Asked by HPR Host Catherine Cruz why HIDOE didn’t survey parents about their in-person or distance learning preference this summer, Kishimoto responded, “We’re doing it by school. Principals are collecting information by school to know what their community needs. We are maximizing a diversity of options.

“That’s a school-based conversation as opposed to using some broad survey,” Kishimoto added. “It’s not about continuously doing surveys, but it’s getting down to the individual family information which is held at the school level.”

HSTA’s Tui also raised concerns about the difficulties of simultaneous classroom and remote instruction.

“Our teachers have been so creative this past year, and a lot of them have found that they can do excellent lessons in distance learning. But the hard part is when you have distance learning and classroom teaching at the same time. It’s really difficult to handle when it’s happening simultaneously. So we don’t want that to happen,” Tui said on the HPR program.

Tui advocated for Hawaii-based teachers in different complexes throughout the state to coordinate distance learning.

In response, Kishimoto said, “He’s speaking to the possibility of having some teachers dedicated to distance learning. Again, for every teacher we dedicate to distance learning, we’re pulling a teacher out of the classroom.”

“We have the same FTEs (full-time equivalent teaching positions) to work with. If we were shifting to distance learning, that would mean teachers in the classrooms would have to agree that they would have a larger class size,” she said, even though some classes would actually shrink in size with more students taking the distance learning option.

“To be able to fully reopen, we really need to protect as many teacher FTEs, or full-time equivalents, in the classroom to address students in person, which is going to limit our ability to do blended or full-distance learning,” Kishimoto added.

“It is difficult to have the same kind of quality of learning if you don’t have a teacher leading it online. We’ll have to provide some of those opportunities without a teacher teaching each lesson online, which means that parents will have to agree that students will be learning in a more self-paced way, using technology with periodic check-ins by teachers,” Kishimoto said.

When most public school students throughout the state return to classrooms on Aug 3, they will still be required to wear masks, Kishimoto and Gov. David Ige said, in spite of guidance released Friday by federal health officials that said students and school staff who’ve been vaccinated could take off masks inside school buildings.

Summer school numbers, Kishimoto’s legacy and future plans

Kishimoto said this year, the state had “the largest summer school that we’ve ever offered, and because of federal relief funds, we were able to offer that at no-cost.”

More than 25,000 students in more than 220 schools attended summer school this year, she said.

Kishimoto decided not to reapply for the superintendent’s job after her current term expires on July 30. The BOE has hired Waipahu High Principal Keith Hayashi as interim superintendent while a search begins for a permanent superintendent.

Asked about her proudest accomplishments during her time as superintendent, Kishimoto first spoke about “interesting innovations around academy designs, increased opportunities for students to work part of their instructional time in the field with businesses and having applied learning opportunities.”

“We adopted new computer science standards and started out that rollout of curriculum” in upper grades, she said, but that work should continue in the elementary school levels.

The department also gave out about $500,000 in innovation grants to educators, where Kishimoto said “teachers are innovating using their own teacher team ideas and that’s something I’d like to see continue.”

HIDOE also modernized its email and financial management systems during her tenure, she said.

“We also were able to win a $15 million national competitive grant for literacy, and I’m very proud of that and the work that’s happening around improving literacy approaches and math approaches in our systems.”

“We’ve provided some foundations for improvement and innovation that can be built upon,” Kishimoto added.

She plans to start her own company called Voice for Equity, with a soft-launch of that in the next few weeks.

“I am going to keep doing my equity work and my empowerment work, particularly focused on women leaders and empowerment,” she said.

“I encourage folks to follow me on Voice for Equity on my Twitter handle and will be launching a website that speaks to some of the both national and local work that I will be doing around preparing women as policy leaders and to get to those hard equity issues that we need to get to,” Kishimoto added.

The Journal, a publication that covers K–12 education technology, reported last week that Kishimoto will also head a new leadership academy for women school superintendents offered by the Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents.