How can Seattle Schools improve remote learning this fall?

With the new school year less than six weeks away, and now set to begin remotely, families, staff, and education advocates are calling on Seattle Public Schools to drastically improve how it serves students from afar after a rocky start to distance learning this spring.

Thousands of students and even many educators lacked laptops or reliable internet. Some classes met daily -- others, once a week. Assignments and video meetings could be clunky and confusing to access, making students’ and parents’ lives even more frustrating in the middle of a major crisis. Many teachers in low-income schools reported that fewer than half of their students were meaningfully participating. A district survey found that most teachers felt ill-equipped for distance learning.

“As educators, we know that what we did in the spring was not good enough, and we want to do better,” said Jennifer Matter, the president of Seattle Education Association, the teachers union, in an interview.

In a bargaining counter-proposal to the district obtained by KUOW, the union this week called for the district to delay the start of the school year by three days to offer additional training for educators focused on distance instruction.

Although remote learning was already part of the district’s fall strategy to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, Seattle Schools lacks a cohesive plan for serving students at a distance, said a member of the union bargaining team, who asked not to be named because they are not authorized to publicly discuss bargaining.

“We’re the biggest district in the state. We're supposed to be a really smart group of people. And I'm just surprised we don't have anything that looks remotely like” the plan that suburban Northshore School District unveiled after announcing that it would start the year remotely, the bargaining team member said.

Union negotiators asked bargaining team members this week to study Northshore’s remote learning plan and glean elements to take to the bargaining table in Seattle.

The union has asked the district for five days of training total -- including two days already scheduled -- focusing on remote instruction, including how to use the necessary technology, specific instruction methods for each educator’s content area or specialty, anti-racist teaching, and how to best serve special education students remotely.

No one from Seattle Public Schools was available to comment, said spokesperson Tim Robinson.

What is vital for the district to deliver this fall, education advocates say, is a focus on both carefully-planned remote instruction and wrap-around services for the district’s most vulnerable students: those from low-income families, children with disabilities, Black, Native American, Latino and Pacific Islander students, and those still learning English.

“More than anything is the divide and equity concern. That is front and center,” said Manuela Slye, president of the Seattle Council PTSA. Along with families of special education students, Slye said, she’s heard from “the families that don't speak the language, that have been disconnected for a long time.”

Slye said parents are also hungry to understand accountability measures. “How are we ensuring that [educators] are doing their work? Is it up to the district? Is it up to the union? So there's a little confusion there.”

Janis White, president of Seattle Special Education PTSA, said that children with disabilities were grievously underserved by distance learning in the spring -- an equity issue on multiple levels, White said, because of the large proportion of Black, Native and Pacific Islander students who receive special education services.

Many families reported not receiving the specially-designed instruction students with disabilities are entitled to by federal law, or speech and occupational therapies schools normally provide.

“It has increased the gap for our community of students, because they did not receive the education they were entitled to during the spring,” White said. She said the district now needs to survey special education families to determine how best to serve them in the fall.

“The district is going to have to provide extra services to those students in order for them to regain the losses that they experienced,” White said.

Universal access to high-speed internet is the key to success this fall, said Erin Okuno, executive director of Southeast Seattle Education Coalition, which advocates for improved educational outcomes for students of color.

“If you had asked me six months ago if I thought that was the number-one thing to push for, I would say ‘no,’” Okuno said. “Because there’s other things, like shelter, rent,” she said. But now that many places people used to go for reliable internet are closed -- like cafes and libraries -- Okuno said that is a crucial piece in the puzzle of making distance learning viable to low-income students.

Seattle School Board member Brandon Hersey, who is an elementary school teacher in Federal Way, said the district needs to work with local and state government to ensure that all students have the high-speed internet they need -- ideally, through citywide free broadband access.

Hersey said with communication with families such a critical part of determining how to best serve students this fall, he’s frustrated that the district has still only heard from one-quarter of families of Black boys through its surveys.

“We still haven’t figured that out,” Hersey said. He added that it’s not enough to engage with families once -- it needs to be ongoing, even each day.

“We need to be having a five-minute daily conversation with [students]. How are you doing? What do you need? So that we can have a catch-all service and we know specifically what families need” -- from rent assistance to food to technical support, Hersey said.

“Principals, instructional assistants, paraeducators, directors of schools, we're all a part of the system. It's not just on the teacher," Hersey said. "It's really got to be an all-hands-on deck from the superintendent to the board, To say to everyone: 'We all have a role to play here, and we could all be doing more.'"

Negotiations between the union and district are scheduled to wrap up on July 31, and the school board is slated to vote on the district’s final proposal on August 12th.

But Slye said a good question she’s been hearing is whether it makes sense to aim for the usual early September start to the school year when the year will be so drastically different from most years -- and when so much is on the line.

“We're scrambling to get there for the beginning of the school year. But the teachers need time to prepare. Do we have time to do the technology needs assessment to really know the pocket of people without technology? And have the time for educators to get their curriculum online?” Slye asked.

“How about we push [the start of school] to September 15? Or September 30?” Slye asked.

“Are we even ready to get started?”