Podcast: Tom Rooney and Scott Rowe: Buildings are Closed, Learning Goes On!

You’re listening to the Getting Smart podcast where we unpack what is new and innovative in education. I’m your host Jessica and you’ve probably noticed this isn’t dropping on our usual Wednesday schedule, but we really wanted to get this one ready and available as soon as possible as our team hopes it supports leaders on the path forward during this unique time.

Along with this podcast we’ve curated and created several resources to help educators, leaders, and families get through the coming weeks. You can find them at GettingSmart.com slash Getting Through. Today we’re sharing two school district success stories on the shift to remote learning after the outbreak of the coronavirus.

In these schools, the buildings may have closed, but the learning has never stopped. Both of these superintendents have built great teams and great systems and they are confident that education in their districts and beyond will emerge better than ever as a result of this crisis. First up is Tom Rooney from Lindsay Unified in California’s Central Valley.

For the last decade, teachers, called learning facilitators in Lindsay, have ensured learners’ success with a performance-based system that promotes agency, transparency, and learner goal setting. We’ve written extensively about the work in Lindsay, so check out the show notes for more information and links to our blogs.

Tom Rooney, welcome back to the GettingSmart podcast. Really glad to be here. Thank you, Tom. Tom, Lindsay’s famous for its leadership in personalized and competency-based learning. Give us a quick overview of the core elements at least a month ago, pre-pandemic.

We’ve been building our learner-centered personalized system for about a decade now. A couple of key core components that drive that system are a number one learner agency. When learners literally understand and know and believe and engage in a manner that they are the owners of their learning and that they are the drivers of that learning. That’s a key piece.

We create systems and structures that promote that. We train our staff to actually give learners ownership. That’s a foundational element. Another core component is the transparency of the content and the knowledge and also the transparency of what mastery looks like.

This is transparency around the academic content that needs to be mastered, as well as the lifelong learning, is what we would call it, or the personal excellence that needs to be demonstrated by learners at each level of their learning. Another core component is personalized goal setting, where all of our learners are actively engaged in meaningful goal setting and then tracking their progress, monitoring their progress,

getting feedback from their learning facilitator, and then adjusting their goals for celebrating their successes as they move through their learning. Remark quickly that in the times that I’ve been to Lindsay, I’ve been able to stop a number of learners, wherever they are, and just ask them what their goals are for the day and they’ll pull out their goal sheet and they can tell you clearly what their goal

is for the day, what they’re working on, why it’s important, what they need to do to move to the next level. Really great evidence of all three of those first points. Yeah. I’m very proud of our team and our learners and what they’re able to do as they move forward

in their learning journey. Just a couple of other key components I think it’s important to recognize though is the leveraging of technology in a blended learning format. What I mean by that is that there’s plenty of face-to-face adult directed instruction, but we’ve learned and we’ve become better and better at delivering our learning in more

of a blended learning format where things that can and should most effectively be learned via technology are delivered in that way of instructing and things that really need to have a person right there with them, they’re done in that format. One other element is, and this is more recent in Lindsay perhaps in the last couple of years, is we’ve really moved towards personalized learning for the adults as well.

This system transformation that we’re a part of, it’s completely learner-centered, but when we begin to view all of us adults as learners as well, then we begin to embrace those same areas of learner agency as adults, content, transparency as adults. What are the skills and dispositions and knowledge that we need to know in order to most effectively lead and most effectively facilitate learning in this type of environment?

We will include in the show notes more detailed explanations of your program there, but tell us what happened when the governor closed schools in California? Well, there was a couple of different things that happened. First of all, the governor had actually closed the schools in California. I know they did in many states, but it’s actually a local decision.

But the governor set it up and was moving towards that. We were looking at this was going to be a two or three week school closure, one of those being an already scheduled spring break. So we kind of went into a short term preparation. And then last Tuesday, he announced to the state that we should be understanding that

schools will most likely be closed through the summer months. And when that statement was made, the Lindsey team went into a different mode of operation. We began to realize that we have a responsibility not to continue the learning for a couple of weeks, but we have a responsibility now to continue the learning for two or three or four months. And that we need to do this without any type of delay or without any type of glitches. And so the team went into an operation knowing the team, I mean, our curriculum team, our leadership team, our learning facilitator team, a variety of different detect department.

They went into really transforming the district into fully living out the vision that is called for in our strategic design. And there’s things such in our strategic design that say stuff back in Lindsey learning is 24 seven in Lindsey, all learners have a can have have access to a device and the Wi Fi 24 seven in Lindsey, the curriculum is online. So therefore our learners can access their learning. And so this required us to really ramp up those areas of our vision to ensure that when the schools closed in Lindsey, that we didn’t cut off the life line of learning for our learners. Because for many of Lindsey learners, the school system is the lifeline for many elements of their life. It often Tom is the lifeline for food. It’s the lifeline for connection. If the lifeline obviously for learning, but for some it’s also the lifeline for love, and the lifeline for hope and opportunity.

And so our commitment in Lindsey is to make sure that we did not cut off the lifeline that many of our learners receive when the schools are open. And so what we decided to do is we shifted our message. Our message was that the schools in Lindsey did not close. What happened was our facilities closed. And the school continued. And we just moved from being a district that was physically look like a, a regular school district to becoming a virtual district. So while we were preparing and planning for all of the details of closing the facilities or shutting down the schools, we were also preparing and planning for the reopening and the transformation of a new learning community, a virtual learning community that would be delivered on day one. And what we found because of the, you know, so all of our learners left last Tuesday, they left our learning communities. Everybody had a device, every parent and learner had connectivity.

There was a few who didn’t, but within a couple of days that was covered. They all left with a personalized learning plan. And our learning facilitators began to engage, not all of them, but many of them began to engage in relevant virtual or distant learning with our learners the very first day that our facilities were closed. And so, and then what we did also, so we began to really begin to have the conversations about every position in the district, whether you were a counselor, whether you were a site leader, whether you were an instructional aide, whether you were some level, some type of a specialist, whether you were a learning facilitator, whatever your role is. The challenge was, now how do you complete the responsibilities of your role in a virtual way.

If you’re a counselor, how do you continue to do that and reach out to some of our most vulnerable and support them. If you are a case worker, how are you connecting with our families and making sure they have the resources that they need and that they deserve in this time of uncertainty and fear. If you are a learning facilitator, how are you prepared and how are you geared up to deliver effective meaningful learning opportunities and connections with the learners that you serve. As a site leader, what are you doing to support learning facilitators and counselors and support staff to guarantee that our system remains in operation. And so Lindsay made that transition in a remarkable way due to the commitment, the deep level of commitment of our team at every level of the organization.

And that’s a bit of what our journey has been like in the last few days anyway. Yeah, that’s really a remarkable transition. Could you say a little bit more about what’s different between elementary and secondary? Yeah, I mean, you always look at, you know, look at that differently in the depending what you mean by exactly by secondary. I would say it’s more different at like the K one or the K two level. And the reason it’s the core element that’s different is that what learners are able to do on their own sometime is a little more limited at the lower ages and what requires more support from the parents.

And so not only are there are the learners home learning, but you have parents now who have a house full or, you know, have a few kids that didn’t used to be home, and the parents now become a much greater partner in the learning, particularly at the lower levels. And so we are committed to continuing to have outreach and support and connections with our parents. And then we’re also being cognizant of the workload cognizant of how much is the right amount of work that we can expect our learners to do in a virtual setting. It’s not like school is open from eight o’clock to three o’clock like it typically would be the variation of the hours vary greatly and and and the number of hours may vary from from learning, you know, from from for learner from learner to learner or from learning environment to learning environment from learning facilitator to learning facilitator. But in the, but in the end it’s, it’s being responsive to that and and we’re moving towards like at the K two level we’re moving towards how we’re going to leverage things such as guided reading in a virtual manner. I mean, it’s not just putting learners on computers or giving them, you know, playlist to engage in which is definitely part of what’s going to happen. But how do we actually through through screencast if I through zoom through variety of different things how do we actually connect with our learners face to face and and guide them in their learning journey and be there with them and be there with the parents and supporting them.

Whereas as you as we move up through the grades, there certainly is a greater level of independence on the part of learners in a greater level of personal responsibility, I think, that really falls more squarely on the shoulders of the learners, and less so on those of the parents so we have. In fact, however, our curriculum is completely transparent. And so exactly what learners need to know has already been defined and how they demonstrate that competency has already been defined. The, you know, it through our empower our power learner management system and power. We literally have thousands of playlist that are in every content area. And that include academic vocabulary that include English learner. And that include elements that include direct instruction that include centers or independent practice that include places for feedback. And so having built the empower platform over these years has really prepared us to launch into this level of of a guaranteed curriculum for all Lindsay learners, even in a virtual way.

What can you say about trying to meet the special needs and learning differences. Yeah, that’s a that’s a great question and probably most likely one of the greatest challenges that we will face. Okay, and so ways, some ways that I know that that is happening is is one is our are learning facilitators there are those who work with learners with special needs, particularly our ed specialists is what to refer to. Is they, they did a lot of work those last few days to really prepare our learners that in a few days. You know, you’re not going to be coming to school and, and this is how we’re going to do your learning and so there was a lot of upfront work with those learners particularly but I think there also is the connection with the parents of those homes is very, very critical and enrolling the support of the parents, and then also providing ways to simply for them to to connect with one another so for example I think a powerful thing that can happen with with learners who have some special needs is that simply having a zoom call with the learning facilitator and seeing their face and the learning facilitator the

ed specialist sharing I’m here. I’m with you. This is what we’re going to do together. Life is going to be different right now, because for many of those learners is not just learning disabilities. For many of them there are, you know, severe behavioral issues or there are sometimes some some challenges that make it very, very difficult to to make the connections in a virtual way but our team is committed to being creative and our team is committed to to finding whatever resources are needed to connect with those learners and help our learners to continue in their learning journey and as you know every IEP is different. Every and the response is going to be different based on what’s called for in the IEP. Anything, especially during the keep seniors on track. We haven’t been we have some details that we still need to work out. As far as like exactly is graduation, you know, any changes that are going to make but the way we’re looking at Tom is that the learning has continued.

The learning has continued. Those seniors know exactly what they need to demonstrate mastery and I think there’s a heightened level of support from our high school counseling team or high school administrative team that are being a little bit more closer with those learners, but they’re they’re putting it back in a certain sense on the learners and saying this is a learner centered system. This is all about you graduation requirements haven’t changed graduation date hasn’t changed. This is what you need to deliver on and we are here to support you when you’re learning facilitator sets up office hours, you better access them when they set up a zoom instructional lesson, you better access them when when they are setting up a and providing you with the power playlist or other learning opportunities, you need to take access and and really embrace those opportunities. And so but there definitely is a there isn’t anything different other than there’s a heightened awareness and a stronger way to reconnect with them.

Tom, how is this experience going to change Lindsay and maybe learning more broadly. I will tell you Tom this experience has absolutely already transformed what’s going to happen in Lindsay in the future. And I’ll tell you why part of it is because just today we literally offered today a full virtual professional learning for 225 of our of our certificated staff and what that means there is 21 different breakout sessions, all done virtually. They were all about what are you going to do and how are you going to do and these are the tools that you’re going to need to actually build virtual learning opportunities and how to ensure that there is actual learning happening systems of accountability systems of community systems of of culture in a virtual virtual classroom or virtual learning environment.

And so what what this is forcing us to do is it’s forcing us to become really good at this 24 seven learning is forcing us to learn the tools that are available to us via technology to connect to communicate to deliver instruction to provide feedback. And it’s not just changing the I mean I haven’t been the superintendent of a virtual district before. Well I am now. And so changing, you know how I lead in changing how other people in various roles are leading and or delivering their services, make it to their services going so I believe that the result of this when we come through this COVID-19. One thing is the Lindsay learners will have been learning throughout the entire experience. The second thing the learning facilitators and the leaders and every adult in the system will have developed a level of competence that we probably never would have gotten to if it weren’t forced upon us like this. And I think the other thing that this will do on a broader scale is this experience, I believe has truly called and put a bright bright bright light. It has shown a light upon the inequities that exist throughout our country with regard to access to the internet and access to knowledge and access to learning. And because how many learners, particularly children of poverty or in or in different situations, how many of them are simply shut off from learning right now. And I can tell you in Lindsay they are not.

And so when you look at this, this is going to change the what’s possible for learning. It’s going to actually all of the naysayers or all of the people who have been pushing back around learner centered models or pushing back around personalized learning or pushing back on the use of technology. I think this is going to change the mindset because everyone’s going to be forced into virtual learning here. And whether it’s for a few weeks or whether it’s for multiple months, people are going to realize it worked and it’s possible. And I think that in the end in Lindsay, we will probably forever from here on out will always have the option of virtual learning because because we’re going to be doing it really well. We’re doing it really well right now. And with each lesson each day each week each month we’re going to get better and better and better at it. And so I think the there will learners and staff and everybody throughout this nation is still going to walk back into their physical buildings.

They’re going to walk back into their physical buildings are going to go back into some of the traditional structures. But I know for many places, they’re going to say, wait a second, we learned to communicate to instruct to lead to to provide service in a different way. What are those things that we don’t need to go back to? What are those things that we should just move forward in time will tell time will tell like on a national international level what this level what this crisis produces but I have a great level of optimism on the way that it will. I know for sure what’s going to change in Lindsay and I have a great level of optimism as to what it’s going to change throughout our nation. Tom Rooney, we appreciate your leadership in Lindsay and nationwide. It’s you have a terrific team and it sounds like they’ve really stepped up and in some respects are hard at inventing the future of learning.

Thanks for joining us for the podcast. I’ll be glad to talk with you Tom. Thanks to Dr Rooney for joining us on today’s episode. He’s also featured in episode 176 called Schools Out Lessons Learned from Lindsay and an episode 205, our very own Rebecca Middles talked about helping to launch the competency based work in Lindsay. Next up, we’ll talk with Scott Rowe, superintendent of the Huntley’s Community School District located in a Northwest Chicago suburb.

We first visited Huntley in 2016 about five years into their transformation and were impressed with the high school blended learning program that allowed learners to earn autonomy and make decisions about their own learning. Two years ago, Huntley launched a competency based micro school. Both of these developments prepared Huntley to efficiently move learning online in the wake of the pandemic. Let’s listen in as Scott Rowe describes the quick shift. Hey Scott Rowe, welcome to the Getting Smart podcast. Absolutely. Thanks Tom for inviting me.

Scott, I had the good chance to visit you at Huntley High a few years ago and we’ve stayed in touch ever since and I just appreciate that you’ve been a real Illinois leader and national leader when it comes to blended and personalized learning. I’d love to have you do the sort of three minute version of what is personalized learning look like at Huntley High or at least what did it look like a month ago? Sure. Well, a month ago had been our reality for the better part of a decade. We started defining our own way of blended back in 2011 and allowing students to take courses in a blended format where they were in class two to three days a week and then the other couple of days they had the ability just to work online. And that originally began in a very traditional high school and we still are a very traditional high school with some ed reform components that are trying to break through the walls of that ancient school system.

But blended is really, it’s evolved and we started with 100 kids back in 2011 and as of today our high school of more than 3,000 students, about 2,600 of them take at least one course blended. What’s beautiful about it is there’s a traditional counterpart for every blended class. So it’s 100% optional for our students. It’s 100% optional for teachers to take their class blended. As it became more popular, our students like that community college feel that our high school provides them. That time management training with a safety net is what we like to call it and allows them the ability to really take ownership and that student agency has become a huge component of our students and how they structure their day, whether it be… It seems like an earned autonomy model. It’s sort of an earned and negotiated autonomy. Kids can get more free time as they demonstrate the ability to use it well. And that’s really evolved. I’m thinking of a couple of teachers in particular who have taken this blended concept even further and if a student is able to show they have the ability to own their learning and still meet our very rigorous learning standards, then that attendance in class and that face-to-face time becomes a little bit more as needed check-ins than requirement to be in class.

Because it’s really an attack on the five-hour, five-clock hour day that Illinois has imposed upon us. I want to note that you converted a gymnasium to a really cool learning hub. So it’s also been a change in the physical space that students can learn in class or if on those days when they’re not in class they can come to school and be in the learning hub and so they can do some classes in the hub and some in their classroom. So it’s been a physical change as well. Yes, Tom. And I’m glad you brought that up because that physical transformation was actually a really important point in the transformation of our high school. We were awarded a $36 million capital improvement grant from early 2000s construction that we did.

Huntley was one of the fastest growing communities in the state of Illinois as well as the nation there for a while during the housing boom of the late 90s and early 2000s and we went from a small rural farm town with 1,500 students, K through 12 to 10,000 students and having nine schools. So with that grant we were able to convert our high school and transform the physical makeup and create more student collaboration space centered around this hub that has some collaboration breakout rooms, very few books and a lot of study carols, open tables for students just to do work. Project rooms all the way around it. Absolutely. And then tables throughout our entire commons area because they didn’t give him 0.5 to 800 kids are hanging in the commons working on things or just hanging out talking. Some kids take a nap which is still hard to get used to but it’s what they’re choosing to do with their time that they don’t have to be in class that we have to become okay with.

Yeah. Scott since I was there you launched a competency pilot I think you have about about 100 students and in that are working on a competency based progressions is that right. Yes, under Tony Sanders when he was our state superintendent, not Tony Sanders excuse me Tony Smith. When he was our state superintendent a few years ago, he opened up a competency based pilot for the state of Illinois and we were one of the first 10 schools to jump into, to enter that pilot it was it was a logical progression for us. You know competency based education is something that I had been paying attention to. Since early years of attending I na coal and learning a little bit about it. And I was the high school principal at the time and as we, as we embarked on that we had formed some great relationships with people like rose Colby who provided us we use her book as a, as a foundation of the, just the shift in the structure of how to build a competency.

And it’s evolved we have we’re in toward the end of year two of actual having students involved. It’s rolled up as kind of a micro school where we have about a little over a little little under 200 students freshman and sophomores involved in in totality right now. It’s going really well our students report report that the structure allows them to connect with their teachers on a deeper level. You know kind of like blended. We didn’t expect that time management skills and student preparedness for college was going to be one of the emerging successes. In our competency pilot, we didn’t expect we call it vanguard vision we didn’t expect that students would report a deeper connection with their teacher and a stronger sense of social emotional support that they have because they have they have downtime it feels like to them, where they can just talk through through learning with their teacher in a more relaxed environment but then also they can Instead of more whole group time they’re getting occasional one on one time with their teacher is that the main reason. Absolutely that’s absolutely it because we have you have a differing group of students that the pace is what is the center point of the entire pilot where our students if they’re able to work faster they do so if they’re able if they need to work slower than that that structure is there we don’t have to, you know hit a unit assessment on a certain date because everybody else is doing it. on the on the level is doing so so that flexibility has really allowed students to understand it and our goal is obviously you know depth of knowledge and increase a deeper level of not only agency but the value in of the learning, but they are we have students in small groups that flow between classrooms without much of a schedule.

We’re learning is prioritized, not sitting in desks and rows and marching when a bell goes off. But pacing is the real challenge here, right, Scott? Because if you care about equity, then competency doesn’t mean just letting kids that can go faster.

It means helping all kids succeed. And so when you find students that are struggling to try to create time and support to keep them on pace is really critical, isn’t it? It absolutely is. And that was actually one of the areas that was one of our biggest struggles.

It is still one of our biggest struggles. And as we have kind of evolved through this process, we actually added an intervention time for just our competency-based group of students who were finding that they were falling further and further behind. And after year one, they had not met some of their ninth grade competencies.

So we needed to find and create a mechanism for them to fill those gaps so that they could achieve the credits that they needed to be technically a sophomore. So we’ve had to really be creative. It’s pushed our system a little bit, which has been a really good thing. But pace is something we continue to struggle with.

The kids that are ready to go ahead of the curve, they do so pretty seamlessly. It’s the students who are struggling in terms of, I guess, being self-starters as an area that, and managing the pace of those students and supporting them where we’ve had to become a little bit more creative. So what happened last week when the governor closed schools?

Well, our world came to a screeching halt would be one thing. We actually called school for last week about three hours before the governor informed us that he was going to. There was a small contingency of 25 or 30 schools on the North Shore and out towards us around Chicago that were growing uncomfortable with the trend.

We were hoping that the governor was going to be in line with where we were. We felt we were at a point where we had to do it, not to put pressure on him in any way, but to just do it because our community was beginning to demand it. He, of course, was thinking the same thing and had a conference call around lunchtime and told us that he was going to make the call.

But it put us in a position where we were going to have to go and be ready for what’s being widely called e-learning now. We had been preparing a school board presentation to go through the process of getting approval to use that for emergency days for next year. We had ourselves pretty prepared.

We’ve been one to one since 2013. So we’ve had six or seven years of tinkering with technology in the classroom, the use of devices to drive learning. We felt pretty good about what was going to happen. It was more about the responding to being safe than it was a fear of what were we going

to do if we weren’t in school. It has gone really, really well. The challenges that we face are the fact that information changes about every 15 minutes and last week was no different. It’s been a whirlwind of a month in Illinois, that’s for sure.

Tell me how things are going at the elementary level and the secondary level, maybe a little bit of noting some of the differences. Sure, sure. We’ll start secondary because secondary was a little bit easier. The structures have already been in place.

We use PowerSchool Learning as our learning management system, formerly Hikoo. Our teachers were going to be pushing out their online assignments to the platform that they and their students were already familiar with. If anyone is listening to this and are contemplating a learning management system, it really is the place that you have to begin before you can do much anything else in terms of bringing

technology to the classroom. It’s your standard. Everything runs through the learning management system. At 6 through 12, it was more around parameters because we were concerned with what kind of a burden was this going to place on our parents, who were now going to be homeschooling their

children. I can tell you after homeschooling, as I transitioned to home-officing, working with my kids on their learning activities, it’s much easier to teach other people’s kids than it is to teach your own. I think parents around the country are realizing that and having a great appreciation for what

teachers do on a daily basis. 6 through 12, business as usual, we just had to put some parameters around what our teachers could push out in terms of the volume of the work. Because we weren’t sure how it was going to go, it was our first time, we put the parameters that 6 through 12, we’d like you to push out no more than 20 to 30 minutes of actual work

for students per class period. We weren’t trying to replicate the school day. We wanted to focus on our learning outcomes instead of seat time. At the elementary level, we actually pulled our instructional coaches with our curriculum department a couple of days prior to this, as we knew that the call was coming.

We had a feeling we needed to be sure that our elementary was where our concern was. Elementary in our school district remains not traditional, but a little bit more traditional. We still hold the learning to read and write and understanding basic math facts. I’m not to the point where I think that can be done as we conduct high school and middle school. There’s a very strong need for teacher and face-to-face time at that level, in my opinion.

So, as we built, we called it a learning hub, a landing spot. And in that landing spot, we created grade level activities. And we pushed out three literacy activities that were 15 to 20 minutes each, and then three math activities that were 15 to 20 minutes each. And that constituted their work day.

It doesn’t seem like it’s not a lot of time, but given e-learning is designed as the replacement of an emergency day or a snow day, it’s not about quantity of time. It’s about remaining engaged in the process of learning and engaged in what matters and at their level of what we’re pushing. So, some of those activities looked like, you know, read a book and then take a picture of the book and upload it to seesaw and then record yourself explaining the central theme and message of that book.

It was one of the activities I did with my second grader. And then she had to practice sight words for 15 or 20 minutes. And then the third activity was read a second book and write some questions that you’d like to ask about that theme to show that you’ve comprehended it and wanted to ask back to the teacher to learn, go a little deeper into the learning. So, the activities were really nice because they brought the parent in and you didn’t have to have any basic training or any education training to support your child.

But the activities were also there was some higher order thinking there in terms of not just rote memorization. So, it was good. My kids, I can speak from a personal perspective, were engaged in the right ways. I surprised them. My fifth grader, who sometimes does not love school, he woke up every morning and before we were really downstairs and settled in,

he was already on and engaged. He loved jumping on and learning on his own terms online. And then it’s evolved as the week went on. And I saw our elementary and secondary people taking advantage of Zoom’s great offer where they waived all fees for 60 days for educators. And our teachers were beginning to evolve, whether it be Google Hangouts or Zoom,

they were needing that face-to-face interaction with students. And they were checking in on progress and reviewing some of the lessons and asking questions about how they had gone. And then what was really interesting is our teachers who missed seeing kids every single day, we’ve had a steady stream of just teacher shout-out videos from the schools being put together on WeVideo, where they put themselves reading a snippet of, I miss the kids and I hope you keep working to background music.

It’s been a really interesting process. Our system has been pushed. But the feedback that we’ve received from parents in the survey that we sent out to them asking, what’s the experience been like for you? And what is it that you’re missing that we can provide?

There’s been very little missing, which is a testament to my team and the teachers. The teachers have been absolutely phenomenal. I could not have asked for more from the teachers of District 158 provided to our students and the families. That’s really exciting.

Scott, what are you and your team doing about special needs students and medically fragile students? Well, there have been two really important components to this process that have been a struggle for us. There’s the designation of quote-unquote, what is an act of God? And what does that mean for services that we provide for grading? And that’s caused a little bit of confusion instead of Illinois.

I know that they’re working on fixing, but the act of God came down and it was designed. And we were informed by the Illinois State Board of Education that act of God meant the school days are not made up. And students, it was optional for them to engage in their learning and no grades could be counted because the days technically didn’t count as student attendance days. Then a couple of days later, it was clarified that student grades could not hurt their current standing,

could only help their current standing. I’m sure educators listening to this could imagine what high schoolers did with that information. But we took the stance of our expectation as District 158 is that you are engaged in your learning and you remain engaged. And we had over about 85% participation rates, so I could not be happier with that. As for special needs students, the Department of Education on the national level, we were waiting for their guidance.

And I think there was a general hope that some relief was going to be provided in terms of some of the mandates of the things that we have to do when we’re in session. And that guidance has come out at a couple of different layers and most recently, no relief was given. So the expectation of educators is that student minutes are met as written in the IEP. So because these were active God days, there was some leeway on what had to be met and what we tried to meet. So of course, we want to support our learners and continue to reach out and support them academically.

As we leave, we’re currently on spring break. So when we get back to school next Monday, we’re on remote learning again through the 8th of April at least. So we’ll be engaging at a much deeper level with our students since we can go beyond this quote unquote active God days and figure out how we can provide those minutes. Whether that be through through zoom and Google Hangouts or trying to work through some of the bugs of the logistics of confidentiality to ensure that social work sessions or speech therapy sessions can take take place with technology. You are medically fragile. That’s a little bit. That’s a little bit different. You know, we’ll for our students who are in some of our self contained program will will will provide some compensatory minutes to those students and whenever things get back back to closer to to normal.

We’ll likely extend our our ESY or extended school year summer school programming for them to to help continue working towards those goals as well as provide some feedback and guidance to parents as some activities they can do that. Their their IEP goals are at the forefront of what we want to help them accomplish. And for some of those students. It’s more about life skill than hitting a an academic standard. You doing anything special to keep juniors and seniors on track for post secondary planning. That is the the question of the day for sure. That’s everyone’s concerned or all the celebrations of graduation and and prom and things like that. You know, at the high school level of the work that’s being pushed out through our learning management system is definitely going to help them in terms of meeting our expectations and standards for the credits that they need to graduate.

As for, you know, things like ceremonies, we’re still working our best and waiting waiting for some some guidance there. The SAT in Illinois, I believe, is scheduled for April 14th. That’s currently we’re scheduled to be back. However, I don’t think anyone really expects that we’re going to be back at that point. So not we’ll receive a waiver in terms of testing from the state or from the feds about for for ESSA, but we will have to figure out how we can get a national SAT in front of all of our students so that they can Take it one more time or meet that junior level requirement that is a graduation requirement the state of Illinois. So we may have a lot of kids next year taking that mandated SAT. We meant to offer it to juniors and seniors. There’ll be a lot of creative planning for sure when it comes to that.

Scott, last question. I’m curious what you think this experience will mean for you and Huntley and maybe even more broadly going forward. You know, I think time I started to to learn about INA coal and getting smart a number of years ago and and became following your team’s work. You know, and seeing the what’s being pushed around the the ed reform community. It’s really it’s driven a whole lot around of my philosophy of education and what we ought to be doing as educators and and and my love for for the work that’s being done in Huntley and pushing the boundaries of what we can do in a traditional high school and middle school and elementary. I think we’re to the point that what we’re all experiencing right now we’re realizing that we can do education differently. And even if it’s going to even if it continues to evolve and looks nothing like what we’re experiencing now amidst this crisis.

What we’re going to realize is is we can do it differently and we don’t have to do it the way it’s been done for the last hundred and fifty years. I genuinely believe that this this awful event that we’re experiencing right now. Is going to be the catalyst for change for the public school system. And I have long believed that the public school system is where we need to be paying our reform attention to that charter schools and a lot of these. Startups with businesses have been great because they pushed pushed the thinking of what school can be. But I’ve always believed that if change is really going to happen it has to happen in the public school system.

And I believe we can do it. But I think that this is going to open the eyes of a lot of people about what students need in terms of instruction and what they don’t need in terms of instruction. And what they don’t need is they don’t have to physically be in a building for seven hours a day sitting in front of a teacher for 47 minute periods relying on that teacher to be the source of all information. And school can change. And this may be the breakdown that we need to start to get to get rid of the schedules to start to get rid of a typical Bell schedule.

And let’s focus on outcomes of learning because we can do that and learning can happen anywhere. And this is the perfect example of that. Scott. We appreciate your leadership in Huntley. We’ll let you get back to another question.

We’ll let you get back to another week of planning for remote learning. But we appreciate your your local and national leadership. Thanks for being with us. Scott. Absolutely.

Appreciate the invitation. Thanks to Scott Ro for joining us on such short notice. Like Tom Rooney we appreciate his leadership. Both of these education leaders were proactive in crisis and quickly rallied their teams to do the best that they could to support every learner right now. They spotted challenges and built solutions to promote equity.

Scott noted after the call that they quickly made sure that every family needing a Wi-Fi hotspot got one and that every single student that wanted two meals a day could pick them up. Both districts do a great job of supporting teachers as leaders and learners. Thanks for tuning in for today’s episode. If you’re looking for more resources and ideas to get through this unique time check out getting smart.com slash getting through. We update it daily with new content and hope it can be a valuable resource for families teachers and leaders.

That’s it for today listeners before you go. Don’t forget to rate and review the podcast. And if you like what you heard be sure to share this episode with a friend or colleague who may find it valuable. For the Getting Smart podcast. This is Jessica signing off.