Smilowitz, Laura Beth
Hello Deb and LA School Board,
I’ve sent several e-mails with questions about curriculum and class time and not heard back from anyone. I have 2 questions/concerns:
1) How will the missed curriculum from the spring quarter of last year (March-May) be covered? My daughter was in high school chemistry and the entire spring quarter curriculum has been skipped. Will that be addressed or are we on our own to do that? What resources will be available to help students with that?
2) Currently in remote learning, the classroom time has been cut from 220 minutes/week to 100 minutes/week. The school board has not addressed this cut in educational time. For AP classes with fixed curriculum, this equates to the students being responsible for independent study for the majority of the class. Is it the intention of the School Board that public education be cut in half and switched to independent study?
I assumed that this was a decision made at the start of the school year when the idea of in-person learning was going to be revisited after the Labor Day weekend. Now that it is clear that remote learning will go on for at least the full first quarter, will the limited in-class time be re-evaluated? This question remains whenever hybrid learning starts and the in-person learning goes to 90 minutes/week. This is approximately a 60% cut in the time for teacher led education.
I’ve emailed the board, the superintendent, and posted questions in live meetings but have not received any response (not even an acknowledgement that the School Board has received the e-mails). Is there a different approach I should
take to address a question to the board? If so, please let me know.
Thanks for your assistance,
Laura Smilowitz
Laura Smilowitz, Ph.D.
Fellow of: Los Alamos National Laboratory, American Physical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science
Chemistry Division
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Phone: (505) 695-6115
e-mail: sm...@lanl.gov