Carrie McPherson Douglass
McPherson Douglass is chair of the Bend-La Pine School Board and co-founder and chief executive of School Board Partners, a national nonprofit that seeks to connect, support and inspire diverse school board members across the country. She lives in Bend.
Gov. Kate Brown’s latest guidelines for reopening schools are necessary, but insufficient. They address safety but not effective learning experiences for our children. As a nation we’ve failed to contain the virus, so how do schools now ensure children have access to the best learning options possible while providing in-person school for the vulnerable children who need it the most?
I have worked in education as a teacher, district leader, philanthropist, elected school board member and chief executive of a nonprofit supporting diverse school board members in cities across the country. Based on my conversations with educators, parents and doctors, I think there is a way forward, but it will require innovation and sacrifice. There is no reason Oregon can’t lead the nation in innovation and equity, but it will take strong state and local leadership and community-wide support, to pull off a better plan.
This plan identifies four priorities: in-person access for vulnerable children, medical-grade personal protective equipment for educators, a statewide online learning curriculum and platform that allows students to progress at their own pace, and innovation in supporting students and families outside of school.
First, we must prioritize vulnerable students and families when deciding who gets to return to in-person school first. We should be opening our doors to provide physically-distanced learning for those who are homeless or food insecure, students with disabilities, students who were behind grade level before the pandemic and students whose parents are essential workers, including teachers. But yes, that also means families who can continue to keep their children home for the short term must do so. Employers must do their part by supporting working parents to manage this extremely difficult juggling act.
Second, the state needs to provide all school-based staff with medical grade personal protective equipment. Without appropriate PPE, we are asking educators to assume unacceptable risk to their personal and family health, and risk triggering additional quarantines throughout the year. With medical grade PPE and proper training, we should be able to safely allow smaller groups of students into schools now.
Third, the Oregon Department of Education should procure an existing high-quality online curriculum and learning platform for all Oregon students. It is absurd that we would have 197 individual districts in Oregon attempting to reinvent the wheel for this fall, with teachers working to develop new online curriculum when we need them focused on connecting with and supporting students.
In selecting an online curriculum and platform, we should take the opportunity to implement a mastery-based learning approach across the state of Oregon that focuses on moving kids forward as they’re ready, rather than advancing them on an age-based fixed schedule. Since we are likely to fail in many ways this year, we should at least “fail forward” and use this crisis as an opportunity to innovate and improve for the future.
Finally, we need to get more creative than simply telling families to figure out how to manage learning at home this fall. Without strong state and local leadership, parents with resources will form “learning pods” and hire private tutors, exacerbating equity issues and resulting in a patchwork and inefficient system. In coordination with community members, districts need to support what is already happening organically and provide coordinated academic and emotional support to small equitable learning pods to ensure every student has a safe and effective place to learn if they can’t be at school.
If public schools don’t innovate well this year, families will leave them in large numbers for private schools, online schools and homeschool programs that are better able to pivot. A Great Exodus from public schools could be the beginning of the end of free, high-quality public education. We should do everything in our power to innovate now and ensure that all children have access to the learning opportunities they need so our already unacceptable achievement gap doesn’t grow during this crisis. We can rise to the occasion and meet the needs of all our kids if we act with creativity and a commitment to ensure every student has a safe place to learn.