Aguilar Garcia, Nickole A
Dear LAPS Board Members, Dr. Steinhaus, and Mrs. Guy:
It is with complete dismay that I find myself once again writing to each of you regarding the issue of implementing the hybrid model at LAPS elementary schools. I was absolutely floored to learn that the local teacher’s union requested an amendment to today’s (10/13/20) school board meeting agenda at the very last moment and that their request was honored with no notice to parents. Once again the shady behavior of a small minority of LAPS educators is dictating the actions of our schools. It is extremely concerning that such a small group of people have so much power over the school district and our community. A group that uses emotional manipulation tactics and fear mongering to loudly get what they want. I read the letter that was written and there was absolutely no factual data for our community to back up their demands. Being that Los Alamos is a scientific community I am shocked that we are being forced to bend to the demands of people who cannot even provide a factual argument to back up their cries. We should instead be looking at the data. So I ask each of you, have you looked at the data as many of you claim? Are you aware that the current and overall COVID infection rate for Los Alamos County is less than 1%? And that even if our numbers double the infection rate would still be less than 1%? LAPS has and continues to meet the state criteria for operating in the hybrid model. Is that criteria not enough? If it is not what is? Parents and teachers who wish to return to the classroom deserve to know what exactly is the criteria we are using to determine if we will move to hybrid. Right now it seems that the emotional cries of a small minority of teachers is the criteria and that whenever they have a tantrum it is decided to move the goal posts. IF you vote to postpone hybrid once again it should be very clear as to what needs to happen for LAPS to move to in person classes, and that needs to be adhered to. If the answer is 0 cases, that will never happen and you must admit that LAPS will never re-open. There will be cases, it will happen. This virus is not going away, even with a vaccine it will take years to eradicate this disease, and based on historical virus data 100% eradication is practically impossible. So we must learn to live and thrive in this environment, our children are being robbed of their education and the devastating damage done to them will take years to recover.
Another question I have asked previously which has not been addressed is: What is the plan to address the academic learning gap caused by students not being in the classroom? I am particularly concerned with academically vulnerable and socioeconomically vulnerable students. We know that teachers cannot cover 100% of the curriculum in remote learning, and teachers I have heard from say that the amount of curriculum actually being covered is close to only 50%. If we continue in remote learning how will any student get caught up? What is the plan? Nothing has been communicated so at this point are we to assume there is no plan? Learning to thrive in this environment will not happen if the school district keeps their heads in the sand. There needs to be a plan and parents deserve to know what that plan is.
I will not revisit the struggles my own family is having with remote learning; I have voiced them in meetings before and written two emails. Nothing has changed for us for the better, in fact academically things are worse. However, my previous concerns still apply and can be read below. I once again implore each of you to evaluate factual data, needs of our students not just academically but their mental health, and to move forward with the hybrid model and get our students BACK IN SCHOOL!
Nickole Garcia
From: "Aguilar Garcia, Nickole A" <naga...@lanl.gov>
Date: Monday, September 7, 2020 at 11:51 PM
To: "e.ben...@laschools.net" <e.ben...@laschools.net>, "c.ber...@laschools.net" <c.ber...@laschools.net>, "s.boe...@laschools.net" <s.boe...@laschools.net>, "m.co...@laschools.net" <m.co...@laschools.net>, "d.ja...@laschools.net"
<d.ja...@laschools.net>, Kurt Steinhaus <k.ste...@laschools.net>, Jennifer Guy <j....@laschools.net>
Subject: Failure to Thrive
Dear LAPS Board Members, Dr. Steinhaus, and Mrs. Guy:
I am disappointed to learn that the board is planning to revisit and possibly vote to reverse the previous decision to move the LAPS to a hybrid model. I am also disappointed in the behavior of the Los Alamos community members and by some LAPS teachers regarding this issue. Instead of working together to put the best possible plan together to meet the needs of students, some community members and teachers are fighting amongst each other, engaging in cyber bullying and harassment. It is abhorrent that our community and teaching staff who are so looked up to as a model for excellence in our state have reduced themselves to this behavior. We must focus on our children and not make them an afterthought in the process. We are a community and a school system where children are taught by the best and the brightest, where we model academic excellence, and where we lead our state and nation in innovation. As a parent of 4 children in LAPS I believe we are losing that ability and I am concerned at the failure to thrive among my children in this remote learning model. Below are a couple of issues that I want to address as they are severely impactful to the health and well-being of all children not just my own.
The Ever Widening Learning Gap: I am concerned as to how teachers plan to address the ever widening learning gap, especially for the most vulnerable students (lack of resources, academically delayed, working in home environments not conducive to remote learning)? We know remote learning cannot equally replace face to face instruction; the longer we keep children in a remote setting the larger and more detrimental the learning gap will become. Why is this not being addressed?
I was very shocked to read a survey of teachers where they were asked which model they felt they could provide students more time and attention and the majority said remote learning. I can tell you from the other side of the screen that is not at all accurate. Google meets are a chaotic mess of distracted children and teachers trying to get their attention while trying to give instructions on what assignments are loaded in to the google classroom. Very little time is actually spent teaching or instructing. My elementary kids would see much more of their teachers in two days of hybrid classes than they do during an entire week of remote instruction. For my 1st and 5th graders under a hybrid model they would see their teachers for about 12 hours a week between the two days; right now on the computer my 5th grader sees his teacher for 4 hours a week and my 1st grader sees her teacher for 6 hours a week, and my Pre-K child sees his teacher for 1 hour a week as opposed to 10ish hours a week in hybrid. I just cannot see how teachers think they are providing more attention/instruction in less time; and again remote learning does not equal face to face instruction. I would rather them have 2 days of in person instruction at 12 hours a week than the minimal time we get in remote learning; not only that there will be 7-8 children or less in each of their classes in the hybrid model. I find it very difficult to believe a teacher can pay more attention to 16+ students on a google meet than 8 or less children in a classroom for 6 hours a day. Additionally, my 5th grader has an IEP and if he were in school he would get daily pull outs for assistance; right now he only sees his resource teacher for an hour a week online! That is definitely not meeting the requirements of his IEP.
Another survey response that shocked me was that most teachers said the students could learn more material and achieve more standards under remote learning. This is absurd, how are they measuring that? Right now my children are so far behind in assignments because as working parents we cannot assist them enough to get all the assigned work completed; and the younger children cannot do the work on the computer independantly. We are basically at the point of giving up because we are not willing to make our children miserable battling them to keep up. It is impossible. Daily on google meets I hear children asking teachers for help and the teachers cannot provide that assistance and tell the children to go ask their parents. More often than not the children say that their parents are busy and cannot help. Many children, including my own, are doing school work in environments that are not set up for success in the remote learning model. My poor 11th grader is in her room, sitting in her bed because that is the only place remotely quiet (and it’s not really quiet at all with 5 other people in the house) for her to go. She told me today her photography teacher was giving her a hard time because the lighting in the room was bad and they get graded on things like that. That is unacceptable to penalize a child for circumstances beyond their control and further discourages them when they are already struggling to begin with. Long term for our family online/remote learning is not sustainable and it will cause my children to fall further and further behind; so much so that it will take months to catch up if it is even possible. Children who are suffering under the remote model will become more and more disengaged, discouraged, and will be unable to close the learning gap. They will be the losers in this situation and the administration and the teachers will ultimately bare the blame for this failure.
Mental Health Concerns: I am concerned about the mental health of my children and their peers. My 11th grader is isolated in her room all day long, not because she has to, because she is loaded with google meets and an insane amount of school work. She sees no friends, rarely comes out except to eat, and is miserable. In fact this entire holiday weekend she has been in her room doing homework because she has so many assignments. The only outsiders she sees are on a computer screen. The only encouragement coming is that she plays volleyball and will start practices this week (thank you to the board for voting to allow practices to resume and I beg you not to take those away either). My 1st grader hates remote learning, to her it is very abstract and we find it extremely difficult to get her engaged with the google meets. She hides when it is time for school and cries when forced to sit for classes. My 5th grader is disengaged and sad he wants to be at school; it is awful as a parent watching my children suffer. I refuse to make my children miserable in their own home. This is their safe place, where they should feel comfortable and relaxed. Additionally, for the middle school and high school children we cannot turn a blind eye to the increase in drug and alcohol use among these children in our community. I was very surprised when I took my children to their yearly physicals and the doctor mentioned they were seeing high rates of STD’s in addition to drug and alcohol use. I was sadly not surprised when the doctor told me they were also seeing significant increases in depression and anxiety among teens in the community. Over the last several years there have been several suicides of local teenagers and none of us want to face that reality again; we must do better for our children. Keeping them isolated with only faces on a screen as interaction outside their own families is cruel.
Trust: When the decision was made to move into a hybrid model it was done so with reassurance from the district administration that they were confident they could do it safely and effectively. As a parent I put my trust in the word of the district. I have heard/seen teachers telling parents they were lied to by the administration and that the schools are in fact not ready to move into a hybrid model; this is extremely concerning. One of two things is happening here: 1. Parents were lied to or 2. Teachers who do not want to go back are speaking out to make parents upset and fearful about sending their children back. Either way this looks really bad for LAPS and it is generating a lack of trust from parents who are desperately looking for solutions for their children because remote learning is not working for them. It is so discouraging that families like mine are again put in position to try and fight for options. It is wrong for other parents to try and take away options for children who need in person instruction because they don’t agree with it, no one is forcing them to send their children to school as they have an online learning option. I realize many teachers have concerns and I am not here to discount them, only to express my concerns for my children and others in the same situation. However, many teachers I know including my children’s elementary teachers WANT to be back in the classroom and have told me they are uncomfortable speaking up because other teachers who do not wish to go back are making it very difficult for them at work. This is not only very sad but that sort of hostility will inevitably begin to affect the students. I believe in order to keep the trust of parents the school board must NOT overturn the decision to start the hybrid model on September 21, 2020. If this is overturned and parents are left in limbo as to if and when an in school option will be available the trust in the district, the board, and the teachers will be significantly called into question. Families who need an in school option have already started to plan and make arrangements for the hybrid model starting in two weeks; going back on this decision and engaging in goal post moving behaviors will destroy any trust parents have and cause further disruptions within their lives. Parents and children need and deserve to know when we can get back in school.
Moving into a hybrid model CAN be successful and positivity from parents, teachers, and the school administration is vital. Our school district is actually the perfect place to implement the hybrid model. As a community the infection numbers are exceptionally low and it is a safe environment to put this model into action. Use the data to move forward. If we continue to wait we will run into cold and flu season which might derail any attempt to make this successful. The hybrid model will need adjustments once the children return because hybrid is new. Why not utilize an agile mindset and focus on continuous improvement? Leveraging our district’s and community’s unique capability of innovation and modeling the way. Trying to create the perfect plan before re-entry will never work, and will become an endless effort in the pursuit of perfection. Please allow the schools to transition to the hybrid model. Further delays will only continue to hurt our children and their failure to thrive will have devastating long term affects that may not be recoverable. Those failures will be the fault of every adult in our community who is not willing to give this a chance.
Thank you for your time and I appreciate your efforts for our children and community.
From: "Aguilar Garcia, Nickole A" <naga...@lanl.gov>
Date: Monday, August 24, 2020 at 4:01 PM
To: "public....@laschools.net" <public....@laschools.net>
Cc: Kurt Steinhaus <k.ste...@laschools.net>
Subject: A Plea from two Stressed and Overwhelmed Parents to Allow a Hybrid Learning Model
To the Los Alamos Public Schools Board Members and Dr. Steinhaus:
We know you all will be meeting this week on August 27th to discuss the path forward for the schools. We hope you read this email and try to put yourselves in our shoes for just a moment. We are two parents who work stressful full time jobs and are working from home the majority of the time. Our days are full of conference calls (anywhere from 7 to 15 between the two of us) and important deadlines. We have 4 children in LAPS: 11th grader, 5th grader, 1st grader, and Pre-K. When we were all sent home in March to work from home and the kids to do remote learning it was a huge challenge; adapting to that way of life was extremely difficult but luckily the kids were not held to much of standard with school so if assignments were missed it was okay. We tried really hard to keep up but after a while we just stopped; we could not keep working and manage the school work for our children and work demands won out. When we had the option to choose hybrid or remote learning for this fall we chose hybrid, and although we would prefer our children in school 5 days a week we thought well we will take what we can get. When the decision came to start school in remote learning we were disappointed but thought well if it is only for a few weeks we will do what we have to do. We set up learning stations for each child, two of which had to be in the same room as our work set ups because we have no other space and because the younger children need constant attention. The first days and first week have been intensely frustrating and difficult. We are trying to manage work demands with increased demands with the kids school video calls, assignments, and assessments. There have been breakdowns, tears, and full disengagement from all of us. As parents we realize we do not have the capability to teach our children, we hardly have the capability to monitor the remote learning. The amount of time we spend assisting our children is so much that our jobs have been impacted. Our children’s teachers have told us that the video calls are recorded but if we waited until after we were done working our children would not start school until 6:30pm at night, that leaves 2 hours to have dinner and get all their work done before bed. And if we are missing the video classes they still have to check in for attendance. Each morning between 8:20 and 9:30 we have each kid on video calls and both of us have work conference calls scheduled, that is 6 people online at once; it is a chaotic mess! Here are just a few examples of how stressful remote learning has been for each child in just the first week of classes:
11th Grader: She is overwhelmed. She cries in frustration constantly and is miserable. She has trouble navigating the technology platforms and when she emails her teachers for assistance she is told to keep trying. She is holed up in her room for hours every day and we never see her. The isolation is causing her to be down about herself and her ability to manage her school work. She misses being at school, misses in class interaction, and misses the outlet being in school gives her. There is no difference for her now between home (her room) and school…there is no break from either place. Our once motivated and engaged daughter is now withdrawn and stressed.
5th Grader: He has an IEP and keeping up with school work and the ability to manage work in a regular classroom setting was already a challenge for him. He cannot navigate google classroom to do assignments even though his teachers and both of us have shown him. We have to oversee everything he does. We thought that the teachers would ease into assignments considering the new situation and the fact that the kids really didn’t finish last semester. Nope, multiple assignments are loaded into google classroom daily and his class only checks in at 8:20am for 30 minutes and checks out at 3pm. The rest of the time is independent learning…basically you are on your own. He is not at a point where he is capable of independently work on his own for hours. If he has questions he has to email his teacher, which is hard because it takes time. If he were in the classroom he could ask questions and get immediate assistance. By the time we get an answer from his teacher he has gotten distracted and moved on from that particular assignment. His resource teacher has tried to help, but he only meets with her online 3 times a week, where in a regular class setting he would have pull outs daily. An additional situation of frustration was when the 5th grade math teacher assigned a math problem that she knew was way above 5th grade level. She wanted the children to find it difficult and to write about their frustrations and how they dealt with it. We were flabbergasted! The first full week of school and she was intentionally trying to frustrate the kids? We were very frustrated trying to help him with the problem only to find out it was intentional. That was really not a great way to start school, and put a sour taste in our mouths.
1st Grader: She cannot navigate the Chromebook at all except to mute and unmute. Each google meet (7 a day, which we are constantly late to because of the chaos), each assignment, each assessment, must be done with one of us parents sitting there with her navigating the computer. This is extremely time consuming and takes away from our ability to work and we have to juggle this with work conference calls. It is so chaotic, noisy, and distracting for everyone. Additionally, with the parents having to help these children are the assessments really accurate? The teachers cannot see or now how much parent involvement was necessary and therefore cannot really accurately assess the child’s readiness in each academic area. My child’s teacher admitted this. Additionally, my daughter was supposed to have some developmental testing done last school year that has been delayed. An example of teacher/student disconnect is when my daughter had music class at the end of the class lots of kids had questions and the music teacher told the kids “If you have questions you can email me; you can email and write sentences yes?” These are 6 year olds who are technically 3rd quarter kindergarteners! It is difficult to get her engaged in a video call, she resists each time and it is a constant battle. Leaving all of us frustrated and it is creating a bad experience for her.
Pre-K: Pre-K didn’t start until a week after the other classes. So far we have been unable to use the iPad provided and the apps necessary to join the google video classes; there is an issue with it. The school is going to replace it so that should help. We feel bad for our little guy because his morning meeting is during our morning conference calls so either we have to opt of a work call or he misses his only connection to his teacher and classmates. We really can’t figure out how a child in Pre-K will be able to remote learn, so all the excitement we had about our child joining a Pre-K program is gone.
We know the teachers are trying their best, but it is not working. We know the principals and teachers are trying to be positive when they send their “The day/week was a success!” email, but it only made us feel defeated. We fear our children will fall further behind and that the chance of success will not be obtainable. We have heard the loud voices of people who want the schools to continue remote learning and not move to a hybrid or full time model and it is so frustrating to those of us who have children who NEED to and WANT to be in school. Those people have a choice, there is a remote learning option, if they want their children to stay home then they can enroll in the online school for the rest of the year. They should not hold back those families and children who need and want an in school option. It feels very dismissive that families like ours are silenced by those others. We feel stressed, overwhelmed, frustrated, miserable, and hopeless. Our plea is that you hear our voices and vote to move into the hybrid model as soon as the governor allows it. Let those who wish to stay home and work online do so; but please don’t hold our children back from returning to in school classes.
Thank you.
Nickole and Lawrence Garcia