Half-day plan approved for four-day school week

Students at Lake Roosevelt Schools will attend in person more than they have in a year, following the passage by the school board of a new schedule aimed at accomplishing increased face time with teachers and peers, even with masks.

The new schedule will get kids in classrooms half a day Monday through Thursday, beginning April 12, nearly doubling their time physically in school but cutting time for those who wish to keep learning online. Fridays will be used to help students who need extra help catching up after a year of mostly online schooling.

In their meeting Monday night, the Grand Coulee Dam Area School District Board of Directors approved the revised schedule that school leaders said is needed to re-engage students who are no longer consistently checking in.

With class times five minutes shorter, school days slightly longer, but total minutes a week physically in front of a teacher growing rom 420 to 787 minutes a week, directors heard a lot about the need for the change from Junior/Senior High Principal Kirk Marshlain and Elementary Principal Lisa Lakin.

Students currently attend in “pods” or cohorts two days a week to limit exposure to each other during the pandemic. And distancing requirements cut class sizes to half or less of what they were before the pandemic, about 14 in a pod.

“We’re supposed to have around 210 students in building per week, but we’re only seeing about 160 of them,” Marshlain told the board. The specific students not attending are not the same ones each time, he said, a result of the “fluid structure” of the current schedule.

It’s a structure that also leads to teachers asking a question of a student online and often getting no response at all, which he has often observed, he said.

His guess: about half of online students are engaged in learning at any one time.

“It’s a large number, where … there’s lack of participation and engagement,” he said. “Those two days that they’re not in person, they’re not engaging, they’re completely separated. … That is a huge barrier to kids being able to be successful.”

He said they’ve noticed that students who had been attending all virtual classes and who later added in-person schooling after foundering academically found more success coming back.

“Their grades have remarkably recovered, and we’re seeing kids recoup some of those grades,” Marshlain said.

Lakin said she supports the change because an earlier one, when classes opened with the current schedule last October, also caused a noticeable improvement.

“I think that consistency of seeing students on a regular basis has made a big difference in the elementary students, and just more hands-on, more eyes-on, more accountability.”

The board voted for the new schedule, with Chairman George LaPlace abstaining after having argued it would take away school time from those who choose to stick with online learning.

The move fits with Gov. Jay Inslee’s new emergency order last week for all schools to add at least some in-person learning time for all students, saying it was needed for many students’ mental health.

Still unknown is whether the state will align its classroom distancing guidance from 6 feet between students to 3 feet, a change recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week, which would allow for fitting more kids into a classroom.