Oswego School District’s next hybrid learning phase will be last for current school year, board told

Oswego School District 308 Associate Superintendent for Educational Services Faith Dahlquist clarified that families will be asked to stick with either a hybrid in-person style of education or remote education until winter break, after the Sept. 28 meeting of the Board of Education.

Oswego School District students and teachers will begin their third phase of hybrid learning amid the continuing COVID-19 pandemic on April 7.

During a Feb. 21 Board of Education meeting, Faith Dahlquist, the district’s associate superintendent for educational services, confirmed the third phase will be the last new phase of hybrid learning for the 2020-2021 school year.

In the district’s first phase of hybrid, remote learning, students were divided into groups that alternated in-person learning for half of the school day, and remote learning throughout the week. In the second phase, plans included split A/B groups for junior high and high school students similar to the first phase, while elementary school students attend school in-person for five half-days a week and continued remote learning in the afternoon.

The third phase that begins April 7 will start after the district’s Spring Break.

The board is expected to approve plans for the third phase during a meeting next Monday, March 1.

Dahlquist recommended districts officials focus on stability for the remainder of the school year, and supporting students and staff in getting adjusted to the last changes of the year and “catching everybody up.”

Board member Toni Morgan asked Dahlquist what the 2021-2022 school year will look like in terms of instruction.

“I assume there will be a plan that next year you can choose to go all-remote, and there will be some dedicated staff for that, and there would be all in-person as best as we can tell,” Morgan asked.

“It remains to be seen what next year would need to look like, but a remote option if we move forward would most likely be dedicated teachers just for that, and a much smaller percentage,” Dahlquist said.

“I would really like us to be able to say, ‘Okay, we are here and this is what we need to do’ and get down to doing this really, really well and have my team and the teachers...start building on all of the things that need to be done to support our students next year,” Dahlquist told the board.

“There is so much work to be done to look at what are the essential standards. How do we build interventions at the beginning of next year to recoup some of this? How are we going to identify our students for gifted in this unusual time? How are we going to make our staffing projections when our kindergarten numbers are quite low and what does that look like? How are we going to adjust assessments?

“There is so much that needs to be done in order to really work on preparing for our students the next time around,” she continued. “I believe that we will have gotten to a max amount of instruction with social distancing, if you’re willing to put aside more social distancing, you can get more in-person time.

“These plans really come very close to the instructional minutes that we would deliver at junior high and high school during a regular year, but it is remote and hybrid approach.”