As a school district we have prepared our teachers and support staffs through extensive professional development to better meet the needs of our students demonstrating significant learning loss during the pandemic due to difficulties students and parents encountered with virtual learning.  The school system, through financial assistance from the state and federal governments, placed in the hands of every student enrolled, either a chrome-book or tablet for the purpose of providing virtual learning during intermittent or complete school closures.  Our collective data showed us that a large percentage of our children were unsuccessful in the virtual platforms because they simply did not fully participate or because their learning styles required consistent in-person instruction in a structured environment provided in our classroom.  This data motivated the system leadership to work toward school-based, in-person instruction to the greatest extent possible. However, we are now better prepared to continue instructing and learning remotely if the need for individual isolations or a complete school shut down should occur.

Through the prolonged struggle with the pandemic, we have learned how to keep our facilities cleaner and safer for children and staff.  Our classrooms, hallways, restrooms, and all common areas are cleaned and fogged multiple times daily. We have implemented procedures and protocols within our transportation fleet by installing temperature scanners, family-based assigned seating, and isolation sections on our buses for students who are transported to and from school.  Our teachers and staff continue to strive to create safe classrooms by creating instructional pods inside the classroom in an attempt to adhere to current social distancing guidelines provided to us by expert scientists, medical professionals, and health and safety officials. Our system chose to require masks on school properties and on buses came through continuous, deliberate research, and constant monitoring of infection rates across our nation and state. We are clearly experiencing a state of emergency due to the fact that rates of infection and hospitalization are increasing at an alarming rate and that our medical facilities are overwhelmed.  Currently Alabama has no ICU beds available. This data is indisputable and a clear indication that as a state we have a continued need to safeguard ourselves and those we love from the threats that COVID-19 and its variants present.

The school system can only be as successful as the community it serves and this is especially true when it comes to fighting COVID-19 and its variants.  Therefore our superintendent and all staff continue to communicate to our stakeholders. Our message to the community is that we can only control our own implementation of sanitization measures, safety protocols, and procedures in adherence to CDC and ADPH guidance.  The safety of our children, and ultimately the academic success of our children, rests in the responsible behavior of the adults in our community to work together to mitigate the spread of the virus.  In a "normal" school year it is often a struggle to get all stakeholders on board for the purpose of educating children.  Today, we are struggling with stakeholders to support our efforts to keep our children safe so that we may educate effectively.  We feel our decision to “mask-up” was the most responsible decision for the safety of children.  We have made an effort to communicate to our community to support this mandate and practice it outside the confines of our schools as well.  Due to the significant increase of COVID in younger children, our approach to mitigation is to require masking, and social distancing, and encourage vaccination.

Many of our stakeholders are concerned about infection rates throughout our district.  This week we have posted on our website our local system dashboard where the community may find weekly updates of positive cases as well as isolations due to COVID-19.  Currently, from Greenville to McKenzie, rates of positive cases and isolations are increasing.  Currently we have only 51 positive cases among staff and students which resulted in 96 isolations in our entire system.  While one positive case and one isolation is too many, neighboring systems with no mask mandates experienced very large numbers of positive cases and large numbers of isolations. 

In addition we have also implemented a change in drop off and pick up procedures to limit the number of people gathering in small areas during these high traffic times to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Our purposes for these changes, while solely based on safety and efficiency, resulted in unhappiness for many and we are apologetic. 

The district will begin the year with its Start Smart Plan to address student learning gaps immediately upon students' return to school. Within the first week of returning to school, all students will take our universal screener,, STAR Reading and Math. Grade Level and Subject Level data meetings will be held to determine what learning gaps resulted from the disruption of intermittent school interruptions last year due to isolations. We will pay particular attention to which standards are not consistently mastered from the previous year and create a plan to embed those standards in this school year's instruction. For our Tier 1 Instruction, we have purchased both interactive digital workbooks and consumables to accompany our textbooks. We have purchased additional seats for on-line curricular resources we currently use. Further, we will determine which students may need Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions. Several schools are using Title monies to hire an additional interventionist to help close those learning gaps that may have occurred. We are hoping to hire 6 retired teachers (1 for each school) to support the intervention programs at each school using the ESSER III State Reserve allocation. These interventionists can provide both pull out and push in services. We will also provide extended learning services. Further, we have purchased two on-line curricular programs that allow us to address individual student gaps: Dream Box (Math) and Lexia Core (reading).We intend to use these programs not only for intervention but also as a resource for blended learning and enrichment. In addition to academic intervention, for our 9-12 students we will also coordinate transcript audits for each student to determine what classes may be needed as a result of the early school closure. Through the transcript audits we will be able to discover is a student is in need of high school credit to graduate. In that way we can determine if a student is to take a credit recovery course through Edgenuity or should take an entire semester through ACCESS. We have already begun this process for students who may have failed a semester course so that students could enroll in our afterschool program. We will continue this process through the summer to determine students that may need to take additional classes in the fall and/or attend our extended learning programs. Last year, about 50% of our high school students were virtual and the majority of them struggled. While we were able to support many of them through our summer programs, not all of our students who failed courses, participated or completed. This has left us with several students who are taking two years worth of core courses within one school year and has left us with a great need to supplement, sustain, and support our afterschool programs.

We are a school-wide Title I system and as a result all of our students are participants in our federal programs. The district's first attempt to ensure equity and to eliminate barriers was to implement the 1 :1 initiative toward blended, and possibly remote, student learning to break down barriers by putting a digital device into every child's and every teacher's hands no matter their gender, race, color, national origin, disability and/or age. Further, this has also given us the ability to become more individualized through our software interventions that address individualized needs. For our special education students, we have implemented Presence Learning and Teach Town to enable our students to access services and interventions remotely or in person. Our district parent liaison meets our families at Walmart to help provide our McKinney Vento students with uniforms, supplies, and toiletries. ESSER and Title funds have given us the ability to provide all student supplies to limit barriers to access. All students have access to our extended day and summer programs.

The district actively monitors all financial allocations. Federal allocations are reviewed monthly. Requests for use of Title federal funds is made through KISSFLow. Requests for use of ESSER funds require the signature of the Federal Programs Director and Superintendent, who work closely with the CSFO, on the purchase order prior to purchase. Use of funds are reported to the district and school leadership teams, at stakeholder meetings, and to the Board of Education.

Through our SEL Initiative we have already begun a Parent University that we hope to sustain with ESSER funds in the coming years. Currently it is an online platform that we hope to expand to include in person meetings this school year. Further, we intend to host several parent nights to assist parents with the technology (hardware and software) that students are now using. One of the issues that became painfully clear last year was that while students and parents are tech savvy on their phones, they lack the foundational skill that Chromebooks require. We hope to help parents navigate the new hardware and software that the students are using so that they can support their child both remotely and when the child is involved in in-person learning. Further, we hope to also use those parent nights to better communicate with parents where their children are academically. We have placed in this budget funds for materials and supplies for family engagement so that we can send home books, manipulatives and other materials that encourage family's to engage in the child's academic process.  We have also worked in a budget category for other compensation that will allow for teachers or office staff to earn an hourly wage after work hours for parent conferences. We will continue to fund our parent liaison through our district Title I set asides who works with our protected population families and contract out a liaison for our EL students to ensure continued family support.