TIVERTON — Distance learning will get students in town back to the classroom in the virtual sense with teachers for at least 20 minutes a day beginning Monday. That’s when the live lessons will begin, but students do not have to watch them at the time they go live.
Parents took to social media soon after Superintendent Peter Sanchioni announced at a School Committee meeting this week that elementary students would have three live lessons a week and middle and high school students would have live lessons for 20 minutes each day so teachers could reinforce concepts and introduce new ones.
“Live lessons only work if your son or daughter is there,” Sanchioni said at the School Committee meeting, adding it is a time when “parents can step aside and let our teachers start engaging again.”
But parents of the district’s roughly 1,800 students, who have been juggling work and helping their children with distance learning since schools physically closed three weeks ago to minimize the spread of COVID-19, say flexibility is imperative.
More than 250 comments were posted on social media from parents, many of whom praised teachers for going “above and beyond,” but said trying to make their schedule work with the demands of their children’s school work demands flexibility.
One mother, who said she has five children in her house ranging in age from 4 to 16, wrote: “It is nearly impossible to assist everyone with their current workload, never mind adding in required times for students to be online.”
Another wrote: “We’ve finally got a schedule that works for us, now it will be flipped on its head.”
Sanchioni said he clarified the directive through a communication to parents.
“We’d like the student to be in the live lesson,” he said Friday afternoon when asked about it, but said the lesson would be available for 48 hours so students unable to take part in the live classroom conference can watch it at a time that is more convenient.
There are only three school days next week. There is no school Thursday or Friday, which is Good Friday. There is also no school on April 17, a professional development day for teachers.
Sanchioni said no standardized testing would be done this spring and there will be no Scholastic Aptitude Test for college-bound students, but SAT will be offered in the fall for juniors.
Asked about senior projects, which is a graduation requirement, Sanchioni said Tiverton High School Principal Christopher Ashley is working with teachers “to turn it into something doable.”
No decision has been made about graduation, but there will be discussions in the future. Nearly all colleges have either canceled or postponed their graduation ceremonies that take place in May. Tiverton’s graduation is slated for early June.
Distance learning currently is slated to continue until May 4, but Sanchioni said at the meeting it will “likely” go beyond May 4. He also said: “It doesn’t look like spring sports will run.”
School Committee Chairman Jerome Larkin called parents the district’s “drafted teachers,” and quipped he saw a social media post that read: “If you see me talking to myself, I’m having a parent-teacher conference.”