Portland Public Schools: Determining Transition To Temporary Distance Learning

Portland OR

08 January, 2022

3:01 AM

Description

Press release from Portland Public Schools: January 6, 2022 Dear PPS Community, "Our goal is to keep our school buildings open and maintain in-person instruction so we can surround our young people with the caring educators and support services they need – as long as we can do so safely. District leaders have been meeting regularly with local health officials to monitor the COVID-19 situation, and we've also been closely tracking data to determine COVID's impact on staff coverage in schools. As a school district, we continue to review daily data to determine our ability to keep individual schools and classrooms open for our students. This includes, but is not limited to: # of staff testing positive # of students testing positive # of staff in quarantine # of students in quarantine # of staffing vacancies # of staffing vacancies that are not covered by a substitute # of additional certified staff available to cover vacancies Special program considerations Additional Information, such as nationwide and statewide metrics, rapidly changing guidance, etc. In order to make transparent and consistent decisions regarding whether or not a school may need to transition to distance learning, we consider all of the above data points to determine whether we can safely and effectively open schools. In monitoring the data throughout the past few days, we are seeing a significant increase in the number of COVID-related absences for both students and staff. The number of unfilled positions across the district has grown this week and the numbers for Friday, January 7 are dramatically higher this evening than they have been the past few nights. As of 6:45pm, we have 413 total school staff who have called-out that are eligible for substitutes; 160 of these jobs are unable to be filled by substitutes and this number is predicted to continue increasing. These data points, plus the fact that our capacity to fill the remaining unfilled positions has decreased in recent days due to central staff who also have COVID-related absences, has resulted in the very difficult decision to close the Cleveland and McDaniel High School campuses, where staff absences are greatest, and begin a transition to temporary distance learning, beginning tomorrow, Friday January 7. This means that Cleveland and McDaniel will have a transition day tomorrow so that educators can plan for the transition to distance learning for next week. At this time, we anticipate that the temporary distance learning will last for one week, that is, through Friday, January 14. See message to Cleveland families See message to McDaniel families Tonight, we are working with these two school communities to prepare for a temporary transition to distance learning. On Friday, we plan to share with the entire PPS community more details about what this will mean if we also have to transition your student's school to distance learning. We are mindful of the significant impact that comes with school closures. Please know we want to keep as many of our students in school as possible, as nearly two years of research shows that school is the best place for them to be academically, socially, mentally, physically, and emotionally. Data has shown over and over again that our schools are among the safest places for students - with layered health and safety strategies like universal masking, social distancing, vaccination and testing. However, where we cannot offer sufficient staffing to continue on-site instruction in a safe environment, we will have to implement temporary distance learning until we can reopen". We appreciate your patience as we navigate these difficult times in our community. Portland Public Schools This press release was produced by Portland Public Schools. The views expressed here are the author's own.