Students could return to campus in October

DOWNEY — Students could potentially return to campus as early as October, according to Downey Unified Superintendent Dr. John Garcia.

After months of uncertainty, students returned to school late last week in an unprecedented way – entirely online.

This - of course - comes after COVID-19 unceremoniously forced schools to physically close down just before spring break last year.

According to Garcia, there are “two prongs” that DUSD is actively looking at.

“The first one is about our current circumstances, which is full distance learning model,” said Garcia. “We were able to welcome our 22,000 kids and 2,500 plus staff back last week.”

“Everybody is on devices, so that obviously put a lot of pressure on our technology division, because starting the school year with that level of people on devices and the demand associated with that is a lot of pressure.”

Preparations also included the implementation of a new learning management system, called Canvas.

“Canvas helps our students – particularly at the secondary level, the middle schools and the high schools – manage their classes,” said Garcia. “Now they go into Canvas, they can click on their class, and it gives them the Zoom link there so they don’t have a separate Zoom link and code.”

“[Canvas] allows teachers to upload lessons, to put all of their information on that learning management system.”

Attendance will count and can be checked through both Zoom and Canvas. Grading will now return to normal.

As for teachers, Garcia says that around 70% of teachers have opted to return to their classrooms while engaging their students virtually. For their safety, they participate in a self-screening questionnaire every morning, and personal protective equipment and social distancing protocols are still enforced.

Staff and teacher meetings also continue to be held virtually.

For those worried about technology issues, Garcia noted that the district has 14,000 new iPads coming in that will be swapped with the previous tablets which were distributed to students.

“We already had 14,000 plus devices in our schools to begin with,” said Garcia. “We handed out about 7,000 devices in the last two weeks of March right after we went out…What we realized during the pandemic was those devices were not cellular enabled, so we had to order hotspots. Well, there was a real struggle to get hotspots in the Spring because everybody was competing.”

“So, we worked with Apple and we upgraded our agreement with them where we would sell back to them our original 14,000 iPads, and we would be able to trade them out – essentially exchange them – for 14,000 cellular-enabled iPads. The reason being is, when the new iPads come in we won’t need hotspots anymore…that will enable every one of our students to have the capability to get online if need be.”

This plan is specifically earmarked for grades TK through 8. High School students will continue to be in contact with their teachers via email.

Meanwhile, the District is trying to stay proactive and keeping its eye to the future, to when campuses eventually reopen.

“We’re also preparing,” said Garcia. “We’re ramping up our disinfecting procedures, we’re getting signage ready for when students do come back on how things are going to flow, how classrooms are going to be laid out, those kinds of things.”

Garcia has little doubt that there will be students on Downey campuses this school year. When, however, depends on LA County and the Department of Public Health.

“As of right now, the metrics in Los Angeles County are heading in the right direction. The Department of Public Health has said once it gets below 200 infections per 100,000 residents they’ll be open to taking wavers for younger students, for TK through 6th grade students,” said Garcia. 

Garcia said that a reopening could happen as early as October, but is more probable to happen in the following year.

“If I had to speculate at this point based on where things are, I would say that it is possible that we could be back as soon as mid-October,” said Garcia. “Most likely, we will be in our current scenario through the end of the calendar year.”

“We’re planning that it could happen in about two months, but we’re looking more towards in January coming back in some way shape or form, feeling like that’s our more realistic timeline.”