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Brownsville school officials discuss start of remote instruction

By Eric Morris emorris@heraldstandard.Com 3 min read
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Brownsville Area School District began remote instruction for students Thursday as schools remain closed due to the viral outbreak plaguing the nation.

In a virtual meeting held Wednesday, school directors discussed district operations under COVID-19 mitigation response efforts mandated by the state to indefinitely close schools while maintaining continuity in educational services.

District Superintendent Dr. Keith Hartbauer said the resumption of academic instruction will mark the start of the fourth nine-week grading period when elementary students begin learning through instructional packets Thursday and secondary students start online learning on Monday.

The district distributed packets to elementary students Wednesday with learning material for seven school days through April 10.

New sets of instructional packets will be available for pick-up each week. Schools officials said parents will still be permitted to pick up instructional materials under the statewide stay-at-home order instituted Wednesday by Gov. Tom Wolf.

“I’m a little concerned, really, for everyone,” said director Gary Seelye. “The more people who get out there, the more contact they have with our staff, and I’m not sure what the answer is. If we somehow can use that online platform for elementary, I certainly would be in favor of that.”

Hartbauer said the district didn’t have the resources or technology to be able to put a digital program in place at the elementary level in such a short period of time, adding that district administration is making arrangements to coordinate completed packet collection from students, which will be announced in the coming days.

“Some teachers in (distributing) that first packet are trying to find out who maybe has the capabilities to do a Google Classroom or Zoom session,” said Hartbauer. “They’re being as creative as they can as they move forward.”

Middle school and high school teachers will begin delivering online instruction to students Monday using the Fusion Flex digital learning platform from the Intermediate Unit 1.

The results of a district-wide technology survey, said Hartbauer, show almost three-quarters of secondary students have online access.

As a result, the district will need to distribute instructional packets to 80 to 100 students in each the middle school and high school, he said. Due to the current workload of teachers to prepare course material, the students who require packets could end up starting instruction one week later than their peers, Hartbauer added.

The following local organizations and companies have agreed to allow students to use their internet hot spots to complete school work: Brownsville Library, Dairy Queen, Dollar General, Jackson Farms and McDonalds. The school parking lot also has Wi-Fi access.

Hartbauer said teachers were asked to create only one nine-weeks worth of instruction for the online platform rather than an entire course, but it is his goal to eventually have them finish creating the digital courses in full.

“If there’s a silver lining to all this…when this thing is all over, we have an online platform ourselves that can be Brownsville Area School District’s own platform,” he said. “So God forbid, if we ever got in a situation like this again, we’d now have our own personal cyber (program), which would save us money in the long run, as well.”

Hartbauer also said district officials were still determining grading procedures for both packet and online instruction and would make an announcement regarding that decision soon.

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