What will Snyder’s public school students experience when they return to school this fall?
That was the main topic of discussion at Thursday evening’s school board meeting from the STEM Lab at Snyder Intermediate School.
Chief Academic Officer Dr. Rachael McClain said it’s possible social distancing requirements will make the 2020-21 school year look different.
“We’re planning in an environment where it’s ever changing,” McClain said. “It’s very likely that we’ll have some changes. We have to have a balance between providing safety for our students and our staff — that is the overriding goal for all of this. We have to provide a safe environment — but at the same time, we have to get back into school and get our students back on track with their education.”
McClain said the district is considering four changes for the fall.
“One is providing a completely virtual environment where students would log in and participate in a class where we might also have students in the physical classroom. We’re looking at designating one or two teachers per grade level to be our virtual teachers and assisting with that environment,” McClain said. “The second part is based on however many number of people would elect to use that virtual environment and where we were at with the guidelines. We might have to do an alternating schedule to keep our ratios down.”
McClain said the alternating schedule could include alternating between learning in the mornings and the afternoons, or alternating between days of the week.
“Our third discussion has been, if we are unable to get our students bused to our schools, move schools out into the community, because right now the busing restrictions are very limiting, probably our biggest barrier to overcome,” said McClain. “And then the fourth option is adjusting the school calendar. It wouldn’t be a significant adjustment, it would be adding in six instructional days and taking six professional development days away. What that does is, it gives us 180 days of instruction, and then, if we need to, we could extend our school year into June for K-5.”
McClain said schools might also focus only on core subjects.
“If we do, especially like the split schedule, we would just focus on core instruction,” she said. “The extracurricular organizations, they’re making some recommendations, UIL, they’re making a recommendation about how we’d do that. But as far as instruction during the school day, just focusing on those core subjects. High school is a little bit different, because they need electives to be able to graduate.”
Students will likely also stay in one classroom throughout the day, McClain said.
“Under current guidelines, unless something changes, the student and the teacher stays together in one classroom,” she said. “There’s no recess. They’d eat lunch in the classroom. That’s with current guidelines.”
She said new directives from the state Education Commissioner Mike Morath are due next week, and could change things.
The school board voted to allow Superintendent Dr. Eddie Bland to enter negotiations to purchase of the former commercial greenhouse The Secret Garden, located at 3605 College Ave.
“We have a plant science P-TECH program now, and we do not have sufficient greenhouse facilities at our high school campus. We started looking at the cost to put a greenhouse physically at the high school for a lab for our plant science pathway, and the cost of the construction and the land prep was going to be around — a little over — $100,000, maybe $120,000. But then this opportunity came up.”
McClain said the greenhouse would have multiple uses, starting as a lab for students who have already taken classroom lessons in plant science.
“We would operate the greenhouse under the plant science pathway, but the marketing students would have an outlet for actually running a business that would be open to the public,” McClain said. “We have a culinary program and we could grow food and have a farm-to-table initiative for our culinary program. It would give us an outlet for our metal students that may make a product that may be a marketable, sellable product and they would have a place to actually sell that, like in a storefront. It would become a hub where could get actual, authentic work experience and support our P-TECH pathways.”
Trustees also discussed an opportunity for an accelerated high school program due to a $1.5 million grant obtained with the assistance of Responsive Education Solutions, the company that will oversee operations at Snyder Junior High School this fall.
“It’s a program that’s very similar to what we’ve had in the district in the past,” McClain said. “Students can come in and regain lost credit, or, if they’re behind, they can accelerate and finish their high school diploma,” she said. “Our target audience for a program like this would be students that are at risk for dropping out. It’s not a GED, it’s a high school diploma.”
Bland reported that Spectra Solar LLC would perform a feasibility study for placing solar panels on the school district’s buildings and campuses.
The board approved a food service management contract with Southwest Food Service for the 2020-2021 school year, tax deeds for trust property in the city of Snyder, the Instructional Materials Allotment and Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) Certification, summer projects for the Maintenance and Operations department, and a donation from the Snyder Football Booster Club.