When Cottonwood-Oak Creek School District returned to in-person learning after winter break on Jan. 19, the school district made changes to its weekly schedule, going from five days a week in person to four normal days followed by a day of at-home work for most students, with some coming onto campus for extra help.
The board said it made the change initially to deal with COVID-19-related staffing issues, hoping that by shifting staffing on the last day, the school district could prevent a need to shut down if teachers got sick, as had happened in the winter.
Since then, the school board made the decision to keep this schedule for the rest of the 2020-21 school year, which the district said was approved by the Arizona Department of Education.
After several months of the new setup, teachers and students have gotten used to a new system that allows them to focus on the students who need it most.
“We had to decide as a team how we were going to best use our time here in the mornings to support as many students as we can,” Cristin Combs, a math teacher at Cottonwood Community School, said. “We decided to look at students who had lower grades — ‘D’s, ‘F’s — who looked like they needed a little more one-on- one support.”
Luis Montijo, a CCS middle schooler who speaks Spanish as his first language, said that he has been able to significantly raise his grades due to the extra one-on-one help.
“It helps me more with my grades,” Montijo. “It is a problem that I speak English a little. You learn more and it’s a surprise for me. It’s not normal. In Mexico [they don’t] do [it] like this.”
“It’s more one-one learning, and teachers have more attention for us,” Idalie Almanza, a fellow CCS student, said. “It’s easier to catch up with my work.”
After a year that has included disruption by the governor and the district board who forced students into remote learning, allowed them to return to campus, forced remote learning again, then settled on the current model, the added stress due to the pandemic and government responses, COCSD educators see this as an opportunity to help the students who need it most.
“The evidence is in their report cards. We have students that are passing their classes,” Combs said. “Even if it means that it got them from an ‘F’ up to a ‘D’, that’s huge for a lot of kids that feel when they get super far behind — ‘Oh, I got too far behind, I can’t get caught up.’ At least they are passing their classes and they don’t have this worry of possible retention.”
For some other students, the extra day is a chance not to catch up, but to excel. Combs has middle school students who come in on Fridays to work on high school-level math ahead of their classmates, using the time for individual study with a teacher there to help if they need it.
While the four-plus-one schedule does allow for extra help for those students, it also means a missing day of in-person learning for the students who are at home. COCSD teachers are assigned to give their students worksheets on Thursday that will keep them involved with the material on Friday, taking advantage of what they learned in the past week and going further. Teachers say they try to ensure that the worksheets are not busy work, but instead ask students to build on what they have learned in the previous week.
The district also allows any parents who feel that they need to send their children in on Friday to do so, regard- less of their academic need. According to CCS Principal Matt Schumacher, the school has seen a steady increase in the number of students doing so.
Educators concede that the work- sheets do not provide the same level of education as a day of school and many parents say their students are not given any worksheets at all.
“There are kids who need more resources, and when resources are limited we have an obligation to target those tools to those students with the greatest need,” Schumacher said. “It’s not everybody getting the same thing, it’s getting what you need. I love the five-day week, but I also look at it from the perspective of where we are as a country right now.”
COCSD educators insist that they are doing their best with a bad situation, understanding that they cannot make up for everything lost in the difficulties of the pandemic year.
“I feel the missing day, no matter whether we’re a four-day week or a normal school week. One of a teacher’s major gripes is time,” Combs said. “COVID has really escalated [time constraints]. We haven’t gotten through what we normally do, and it’s reality, because of weird circumstances this year. So it’s not necessary that I feel the [missing] day because we’re on a four-to-one [schedule]. I feel the day because of the year.”
The school district also hopes to learn from what they are now doing and continue to give extra help to students who need it even when they return to a five-day week next fall.
“The goal is a year from now we’re reviewing our benchmark data [to help us focus on students who need extra help],” COCSD Superintendent Steve King said. “Why wouldn’t that guide how we do things? If it’s effective now during COVID, let’s keep doing it. If we don’t learn from now when we’re changing things up, shame on us.”
