Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum Dr. Jack Silva unveiled the district’s plan for fully remote learning in the event of a complete school closure due to positive coronavirus test results at the Nov. 9 school board meeting. Although the district has no immediate plans to go fully online, Silva said, “Good fortune favors the prepared.” The schedule is depicted in the image accompanying this article.

Dr. Silva also informed the board of the district’s planned response to unsatisfactory eClassroom student results during the first marking period: requiring middle and high school students who have not made adequate progress to return to school two days per week, on the hybrid schedule already utilized by roughly 75 percent of district children. Principals and guidance counselors have been determining which students will be required to return to in-classroom education to reverse disengagement and other reasons underlying lack of success.

A letter to parents reads in part, “After ten weeks of school in the hybrid format, the BASD has implemented successful mitigation plans that prevent the spread of COVID within the school buildings. With the success of our health and safety plans, we have kept all BASD students safe and healthy when they are in school.” To date, no transmission of the novel coronavirus has been traced to a BASD building; the district maintains a dashboard here (https://www.basdschools.org/covid19dashboard). “We have a responsibility to educate these students,” Superintendent Dr. Joseph Roy said. “There are still compulsory education laws.”

Board member Shannon Patrick asked about students seeking more direct instruction time as part of the hybrid model. Silva noted that many teachers have scheduled small group Zoom activities to supplement independent work on remote learning days, but that the nature of the hybrid program makes it challenging to formalize these changes across all classes and buildings. Additionally, responses from a parent survey indicate that more parents prefer asynchronous instruction, perhaps due to work schedules and child care constraints. (The full set of parent survey responses, as well as teacher survey responses, is still being analyzed. The district plans to release a discussion of the results on its website when the analysis is complete.)

Silva also walked the board through the high school program of studies changes planned for implementation in 2020-21. Changes include the upgrade of a world language class on interpreting from a half-credit course to a full-credit course and the build-out of the education pathway. BASD is working with local colleges to select introductory-level education courses suitable for dual enrollment for the 2020–21 academic year. One aim of such partnerships, according to Silva, is to create a diverse, homegrown group of teachers for the district’s own future workforce.

One member of the public asked why Catholic grade schools have students in school buildings five days a week, but BASD elementary students are not permitted on-site more than two days per week. Roy cited Pa. Secretary of Health Rachel Levine’s late August guidance regarding school attendance and community spread; based on the rolling average of positive coronavirus tests in Northampton County, Levine’s matrix recommends online-only education, regardless of whether any transmission has been linked to schools. Northampton County’s positive test rate is 6 percent, and Secretary Levine’s cutoff for hybrid education is 5 percent. Roy additionally stated, “If we don’t have spread in schools – and the Bethlehem Health Bureau and St. Luke’s have confirmed that we don’t – kids need to be in school. I’d like to be able to continue in the hybrid [model].”

During the facilities committee meeting, Chief Facilities Officer Mark Stein presented the district’s energy plan. From the 2009–10 school year through this past June, the district has spent roughly $1.6 million on energy-saving enhancements, which have enabled cost savings of nearly $16.8 million. Components of BASD’s energy plan include demand management –reducing energy usage at peak times – and upgrades to HVAC equipment. Eight of the nine school buildings in the state that were Energy Star-certified by the federal Energy Information Administration’s Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey program (CBECS) are in BASD.

Chief Technology Officer Marie Bachman presented the five-year technology plan. Recurring technology costs – nearly $1.2 million last year – come from hardware purchases, maintenance contracts, and software licensing. In addition to these items, Chromebook replacements will be made as each student enters kindergarten, fifth grade, and ninth grade.

At its Nov. 23 meeting, the board was scheduled to vote on $1.5 million worth of summer 2021 projects discussed at the October facilities committee meeting. The board will also vote on the new plan of studies and a three-year contract renewal with WeVideo. As Mark James, Supervisor of Professional Learning, Technology Integration, and Secondary Mathematics, explained, “We have actually used WeVideo for the past three years. In order to secure the best pricing, we are entering into a new three-year agreement with them. This is not directly related to eClassroom or remotely learning specifically.”

James says BASD selected this product because it allows students “to collaborate in real time in the creation and editing of videos (like iMovie, but on a Chromebook with cloud-based storage) as a way to demonstrate their learning of standards-aligned academic content.” The proposed contract will increase the number of users from 950 (students and teachers) to 10,200 in the first year, covering the majority of BASD students, with an option to add more users. The software will be used to foster collaboration among students in hybrid, fully remote, and fully on-site models.