Category Archives: DeKalb County School District

Schools across Metro Atlanta will be opening next month. What’s the plan for DeKalb Schools?

DeKalb Schools’ new fearless leader, Superintendent Cheryl Watson-Harris, and her team will be presenting the School Re-Opening Plan at the July 13 board meeting. At this time, I don’t have any advanced knowledge of what the plan may look like. I am as eager as everyone else to see what is presented on Monday.

DeKalb Schools Opening Day: I expect DeKalb Schools to push back opening day to Aug 17.

Virtual Instruction – Note: There are two types of virtual instruction. DeKalb Flex Academy and Forsyth Virtual Academy are on online schools separate from the brick and mortal schools. These virtual schools have their own course work and teachers.

The other type of virtual learning is where you have the same teacher and course work as the in-person traditional learning, but you are in that class virtually on that day. A teacher shared with me this week that she attended “Virtual Summer Camp” on how to conduct live virtual lessons via Microsoft Teams. She went on to say, “We were given daily Power Points, a schedule, with time for independent learning.”

I wasn’t able to ascertain what type of virtual learning some of the school districts are offering. I’m also not sure how viable it is for teachers to have in-person and virtual classes at the same time. Clayton schools will be on an A/B schedule with half of their students in-person and half of their students virtual Mon – Thur. Not quite sure of the logistics of that.

Here is what the other school districts in the Metro Atlanta are doing.

Atlanta Public Schools (APS) – APS has a new superintendent as well. School is currently scheduled to start on Aug 10, but they have not released any details of how they will open.

Clayton County – Clayton has not pushed their start date back and will open Aug 3. Clayton county will follow the moderate risk plan with half the students going on Mondays and Wednesdays and the other half the students on Tuesday and Thursday.

Cobb County – Cobb has pushed their start date back to Aug 17. Parents will be able to choose from in-person traditional instruction or remote virtual instruction.

Fayette County – Fayette will open Aug 10. Parents will be able to choose from in-person traditional instruction or remote virtual instruction. Remote virtual instruction will be scheduled real time lessons combined with asynchronous learning experiences. Attendance and student online engagement will be recorded. Assignments will be graded, and grading practices appropriate for a full-time virtual classroom will be developed.

Forsyth County – Forsyth will open Aug 6. Grades 6 – 12 may attend the Forsyth Virtual Academy. K – 5 parents will be able to choose from in-person traditional instruction or remote virtual instruction. The K-5 virtual option is still being developed.

Fulton County – It is speculated that Fulton County schools will push back their start date to Aug 17. Fulton parents, however, will be able to choose from in-person traditional instruction or remote virtual instruction.

Gwinnett Schools – Gwinnett met earlier this week to push back their start date to Aug 12. Parents will be able to choose from in-person traditional instruction or at home digital learning.

Hall County – Hall County will start Aug 7 with in-person traditional instruction. Parents and students may utilize Hall County Schools’ Virtual Learning Platform (a full-time online experience).

Henry County – Henry will start Aug 3. Parents will be able to choose from in-person traditional instruction or remote learning classes from home.

Marietta City – Marietta City Schools will start Aug 4. Parents will be able to choose from in-person traditional instruction or remote virtual instruction. 20% of the parents indicated in a survey that they wanted a virtual environment. Marietta City Schools is in the process of building virtual classes and assigning virtual teachers.

Rockdale County – Rockdale will have a soft opening on Aug 24 with all students doing remote virtual instruction. The first official day of school will be Sept 8 with a Hybrid Model of in-person and virtual (Independent) learning to reduce the number of students in the buildings at one time. Details pertaining to the Hybrid Model and Independent Learning will be out in the coming days and weeks.

RELATED POSTS

DeKalb Schools Re-Opening Update
July 5, 2020 – Will DeKalb Schools open on August 3rd as planned and what will learning look like when DeKalb Schools opens? Marshall Orson is currently the chair of the DeKalb Schools Board of Education. He addresses some of the most frequently asked questions about opening DeKalb Schools in the Fall.

DeKalb Schools Re-Opening Framework
June 20, 2020 – DeKalb Schools Re-Opening School Task Force built a framework to serve as a transition document to the new Superintendent for final decisions on how to re-open on the first day of school on Aug 3, 2020.

CDC’s Considerations For Schools
May 23, 2020 – Spacing recommendations are going to be particularly burdensome for students and teachers in District 1 given the persistent overcrowding in this area. The arithmetic of students, bus seats, and square footage make it difficult to balance the equation.

Virtual Classrooms – The Future of DeKalb Schools
May 16, 2020 – There is still no definitive plan for what school will look like when it opens in August.

However, DeKalb Schools is full speed ahead planning on school in traditional classrooms as well as Virtual Classrooms.

How do I claim my ‘A’s in my classes and call it good for the school year right now?

Yesterday, DeKalb Schools released an End-Of-Year Guide explainging how the district plans on wrapping up the 2019-2020 school year. In addition to a modified calendar and end of year activities, it explained final grade calculations.

1st – 11th Grades – Final Grade Calculations
Teachers will calculate each student’s final grade after evaluating which option is higher.
• Option A – Use the grade as of March 13, 2020 as the semester final grade
• Option B – Use the grade as of March 13, 2020 and the virtual learning assignments to calculate the semester final grade

If a student has earned an “A” as of March 13th, the grade is archived. Any virtual learning assignments will be graded and can only improve a student’s grade. Administrators will receive the procedures for teachers to access the archived grades within the next week. During a scheduled student and/or parent conference, a teacher will be able to share a student’s archived grade. In the meantime, a parent and student may access the current grade including virtual learning assignments through Infinite Campus.

Parents who would like to see their student’s grade as of March 13th which was the 9-week grading period, can log into Infinite Campus Parent Portal. Once parents log into parent portal, click on the course and then click on term 2-1 and you will see the 9-week average.

My most frequently asked question from parents and students: How do I claim my March 13th ‘A’ and be done with the school year in that class?

Some of the heartfelt responses from teachers include:

This is a great opportunity to improve grades!!! Teachers are working hard on lesson plans and to try to help kids with virtual assignments!! I’m trying my hardest as a mom and as a teacher! Don’t throw in the towel!!!!

I am doing three things in my classes, and it is exhausting! For those who were failing at 9 weeks, I have to find a way to give them an opportunity to raise their grade and pass. For those who want to be prepared for the future, I have to find a way to make sure they have an opportunity to learn all they should learn. And for those who just want a bump, to turn that C into a B or that B into an A, I have to have a mechanism that fairly allows that. But I expect (quite reasonably) that most of my students are going to disappear. And I will miss them a great deal…

Stacy Stepney is the Chief Academic Officer at DeKalb Schools. She has some thoughts for students who would like to call it a year.

STACY STEPNEY
DeKalb Schools – Chief Academic Officer