During the Healdsburg school board’s most recent board of trustees meeting on April 15, Healdsburg Unified School District (HUSD) Superintendent Chris Vanden Heuvel provided an update on distance learning in the district. The update outlined three main takeaways: Some students still do not have remote learning connectivity, grading practices at Healdsburg High School are still being nailed down and June is not looking good for seniors in terms of graduation and prom.
“I hate to say this, but this abnormal distance learning thing is beginning to feel normal,” Vanden Heuvel said before his presentation. “That said, there is still a lot of learning and evolution involved in terms of instruction.”
Vanden Heuvel estimated that around 40 to 50 students are still without internet connectivity. He added that getting internet access for families who live in the rural areas of Chalk Hill and Westside Road has also been challenging due to poor cell and internet services in the area.
However, the district has ordered a new round of hotspots and more Chromebooks have been distributed.
“We are making headway instructionally with technology. Chromebooks have been distributed to the students in the elementary school who didn’t have access to a device,” he said.
In addition to ramping up tech resources, the district is also working on increasing resources for parents by creating a frequently asked questions page on the HUSD website. Vanden Heuvel said they hope to have the page up and running by the end of the week.
While there are still some kinks to work out on the connectivity side, Vanden Heuvel said food distribution has gone smoothly.
“Food service is going well. We’ve now pushed out to the Grove Street apartments, the Foss Creek apartments and the Canyon Run apartments. We are serving on each of those campuses daily,” he said.
The district has been serving up to 700 grab and go meals per day.
During public comment, HUSD parent Corinne Meadows Efran voiced a “thank you” to the district for working hard to respond to students’ needs.
“I really want to give you guys kudos. I am very impressed and pleased to hear what the district is compassionately doing to help HUSD students with food needs, Chromebooks, hotspots, everything. Just hearing the way the food has been made more accessible is really heartening … I really wanted to say that I am impressed,” she said.
School board trustee Mike Potmesil echoed Efran’s comments, saying that parents are amazed at what teachers in the district are doing.
Vanden Heuvel agreed wholeheartedly. “Everybody has been amazing and has really stepped up to the plate to meet the needs and it is amazing to watch.”
Grading
Establishing a fair and equitable grading system has also been a challenge, and while Healdsburg Junior High School has adopted a pass/fail grading policy for distance learning, the grading process for high school students is still yet to be determined.
“We have healthy conversations going on at the high school on what hold harmless grading actually means and we are working toward some collaborative solutions there,” Vanden Heuvel said.
Two HUSD parents, Jennifer Wagner and Efran, expressed concerns about pass/fail grading and wondered how they can continue to motivate their children to complete school work.
Efran said she was confused as to why the junior high was using a pass/fail system.
“Every district in the nation is struggling with this right now,” Vanden Heuvel said of grading. “In fact yesterday, Los Angeles Unified School District just came out with their agreement with their union that no student, no matter if they had never shown up for school, if they are enrolled this year, nobody is getting an F. We have been engaging in a lot of discussion on how to do grades. Grades, especially in the secondary, really are of great consequence in high schools because of the college aspect and potential jobs. In junior high, grades are not as big of a deal. We still want to give grades, we want to assess students and be able to recognize how they are doing, but they do not have this lasting effect that a high school grade does that is memorialized for life.”
He said the junior high decided to go with pass or fail marks because it was the most equitable method.
“It honors whatever students are encountering,” such as perhaps not having internet access or a quiet place to study, he said.
“High school did not want to take a pass/fail way of going because it is too foreign for the college entrance process,” he said.
Struggles of being a senior in 2020
“I will say it is not starting to look so good for June,” Vanden Heuvel said with a somber tone. “We are just really sad for our seniors. It just cannot be said enough how devastating this is for those kids and parents, it is a right of passage for both.”
To look at alternatives for graduation, Healdsburg High School Principal Bill Halliday created a committee of parents, staff and students, to try to work on solutions and ideas for a virtual prom and graduation celebration.
Vanden Heuvel said it seems unlikely the district will be able to postpone graduation and hold a ceremony in August.
“I remember my own graduation and that grad night, and you knew it was kind of the last time you were all going to be together and it was special because of that and these kids aren’t ever really going to have that opportunity, which is really sad,” Vanden Heuvel said. “It seems large events are not going to be feasible for a while, so we may not be able to have a graduation, but we will do something virtually to be able to celebrate them.”
Waiving volunteer hours
During Wednesday’s virtual meeting, trustees unanimously voted to waive the 10-hour community service graduation requirement for seniors for the class of 2020.
According to Erin Fender, the district’s director of curriculum and instruction, it was recognized that students would not be able to complete their 10 hours due to the shelter-in-place order, meriting the need for a waiver.
Potmesil asked if the district had any idea on how many seniors have already completed their required hours, however, Fender said she’d have to look into it in order to provide an accurate answer.
The district has also made an allowance for the two-year P.E. requirement.
All students are required to take freshman P.E. and a second year of P.E., typically in their sophomore year. Alternatively, students can fulfill their second year requirement by participating in two full seasons of sports.
Vanden Heuvel pointed out that there are a number of students who were counting on the 2020 spring sports season in order to complete their P.E. requirement. For these particular students in this scenario, if they were signed up for a spring sport this will still count towards fulfilling their P.E. requirement despite the fact the season was brought to a halt.
