Wake schools outlining the future of emergency remote learning days

The policy heads to the full board’s June meeting for a first reading before passage.

Superintendent Cathy Q. Moore would be able to call for remote learning in the event of bad weather or burst pipes, for example, under the proposed policy. Moore would not be able to order schools to pivot to remote learning on an ongoing basis, like in the event of a pandemic, without board approval.

Last week, Moore made Friday a remote learning day across the district after parents and employees reported struggles to get the gas to commute to work. Students were back in classrooms Monday.

The policy discussed Wednesday also outlines how school officials would intervene with Virtual Academy students who have excessive absences.

Current policy, which is unchanged in the new draft, counts 20 absences as excessive, regardless of whether they are excused.

But the draft added a provision for Virtual Academy students that says school-based attendance teams, which work on attendance interventions with students’ parents or guardians, can decide whether to recommend students with excessive absences return to in-person instruction. The teams would make the recommendations to principals.

Board Member Monika Johnson-Hostler said she was concerned about writing policies focused on punitive action toward students, and Board Chairman Keith Sutton said he was concerned the policy suggested in-person learning was the solution to struggles with remote attendance.

District officials said a recommendation for in-person would come only after other interventions and that principals will discuss the recommendation with parents and guardians. The policy doesn’t call for in-person learning as the solution, Moore said.

“I don’t think it goes as far to say that’s the answer,” Moore said.

The interventions should be a bigger priority in an attendance policy, Johnson-Hostler said. She echoed Sutton’s argument that requiring an excessively absent student, especially an older student, to attend in-person may not actually improve the student’s attendance.

“I assure you our attendance teams are not waiting for 20 absences” to intervene with students, said Paul Koh, district assistant superintendent for student support services.

Koh suggested changing the language of the provision to specify that officials will discuss the best educational setting for the student after 20 absences.

The committee approved the attendance policy with that change.

Koh also presented the district’s definitions related to attendance rules and procedures.

Absences caused by isolation or quarantine will continue to count as excused absences.

Students who must quarantine will be given access to their assignments and have communication with instructors but would not attend their classes virtually because of the district’s elimination of concurrent online and in-person teaching.

Board members noted challenges to attendance posed by COVID-19 more broadly.

Board Member Karen Carter asked if those students could be considered “present” instead of “absent,” because they are still doing their schoolwork.

“That is something we’ve been grappling with quite a bit,” Koh said. The district is looking at what other school districts are doing. The district has chosen to keep quarantine as an excused absence to keep a consistent standard with excused absences caused by other events.

Also on Wednesday, Rodney Trice, the district’s assistant superintendent for equity affairs, briefly presented a proposed equity policy for the district.

Trice won’t oversee the final policy. He is leaving the district this summer to become the chief equity and engagement officer at Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools.

The board did not take a vote on the proposal, which will continue to undergo revisions. It was first completed in 2019. The presentation Wednesday starts the discussion on the policy, Committee Chairwoman Christine Kushner said.

The draft policy defines educational equity as “raising the achievement of all students while narrowing the gaps between the lowest and highest performing students and eliminating the racial or cultural predictability and disproportionality of which student groups occupy the highest and lowest achievement categories.”

The draft policy is a commitment to: continually evaluating equity within the district, recruiting and retaining diverse employees, providing equitable support and resources across the district, eliminate tools that cause achievement disparities, ensure personnel have access to tools to help them employ “culturally responsive practices,” include diverse voices in decision-making processes, maintain diverse contractors, and use outside agencies that can help in achieving the district’s equity goals.

The document represents board “philosophy,” it says, and does not authorize discrimination and cannot be used as the basis of any formal grievance or appeal.

Sutton said he was glad to define the board’s idea of equity and its vision.

“I think it’s time we move away from this gray space,” Sutton said. Having a definition of equity helps guide the work the board and district do.

Sutton also noted the widespread inequities in access to education seen today, such as disparities in Internet access.

Other board members said they were glad to return to working on the policy.

“When we don’t define our terms, there are people who will define them for us,” Board Member Chis Heagarty said. Some people will try to take something that is not equity and attack the district or criticize the district or say the district is working toward something that is not part of district policy, he said.

The district has faced concern from conservatives that teachers are using critical race theory in classroom instruction, which the district denies.

Critical race theory teaches racism as a social construct and contends racism is embedded in laws and policies, according to a recent Education Week article.