The Mingus Union High School District governing board voted 4-1 Thursday, Jan. 7, to continue the remote learning indefinitely, though it intends to meet again next Thursday Jan. 14, to discuss the district’s status.
Board Member Lori Drake was the lone dissenting vote.
After voting to close down campus for in-person learning on Nov. 19, then voting again to keep the district closed through Jan. 8 on Dec. 3, the board heard from Superintendent Mike Westcott and Carol Lewis of Yavapai County Community Health Services, Jan. 7 and discussed its learning model for the coming weeks,
Westcott expressed concern about the spread of COVID-19 in the area, and argued that the high school could not safely return to in-person learning.
“My recommendation would be a continuation of distance learning with a reliance on the [COVID-19] metrics that we’ve held all along,” Westcott said. “I would recommend that the board not deviate from the prior motions that have included a reliance on the metrics. I think that we’re close enough to vaccinations and Phase 1B [of the Arizona Department of Health Services vaccination plan] that the board may want to incorporate that in a decision as well. The metrics in my mind make the continuation of distance learning an obvious choice. I’m just going to say it. I don’t think that’s up for debate.”
Drake expressed concern that the continuation of remote learning is causing difficulties for students, both in terms of reduced student achievement, as well as concerns that “we’re releasing these kids into the community when they should be in the school.”
Drake expressed a desire for a change in the way remote learning is done if it is to continue, in the hopes of dealing with both issues. She asked that the district make the schedule for online learning more similar to the one for in-person learning.
“Children are not doing as well as they were,” Drake said. “We need to have more instruction time, less time on their own. They should be in the school or they should be online with the school.”
But the board and school administrators rejected Drake’s suggestion, with Mingus Union High School Principal Genie Gee defending the school’s current practice of teaching classes in the morning while giving afternoons for work time.
Board President Carol Anne Teague also argued against shifting the remote learning model, arguing that it was worth keeping some continuity in the midst of a school year in which she and the board voted to start with remote learning, then voted to go to in-person and then voted to go back again to remote learning.
“There’s enough that’s going on without changing things on our young people,” Teague said about her board’s alternating votes in the 2020-2021 school year. “If this is what we’re going with and what it’s going to be long term, then coming up with a model we’re going to stay with is important.”
