“Hi guys. Mrs. Howe here,” Melissa Howe, a fifth-grade math teacher at Camp Verde Elementary School, says into the camera on YouTube. “I wanted to let you know that I know things are crazy around the world, but we must do our best to continue on, so I’m here to help you with our daily math lessons for the week. Yay! I know you’re so excited.”
Arizona schools closed down on Monday, March 16 in an attempt to stop the spread of the coronavirus. On Friday, March 20, Gov.Doug Ducey and Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman announced an extension of the school closures through April 10, meaning a minimum of four weeks without direct in-person instruction for students. Teachers like Howe are finding new ways of doing things.
“I’ve had a couple of parents email me asking me what’s going on,” Howe said. She has been posting the lectures she had been planning on teaching up on YouTube with the hashtag #mhowemath, hoping students will check them out. “It’s all still in the beginning stages, and it’s a work in progress, learning as we go kind of thing. There’s no handbook for this situation.”
While some teachers like Howe have been posting videos, school districts have been organizing work packets that students can receive to keep up their studies even as they’re home for an extended time, accessible either for in-person pickup or online. None of the Verde Valley school districts has yet announced any plans to make grades contingent on completion of these packets, but they are an attempt to allow students to still keep up if they or their parents seek it out.
Superintendent Steve King of the Cottonwood-Oak Creek School District, which has put links to a Google Drive folder on its website that parents can access with worksheets for students, said that his view of educators’ role was helping families deal with the crisis, accepting that things would not be normal, but also doing what they could to provide education to those who sought it.
“We are not in an academic crisis right now,” King said. “Those kids out there — so many of them don’t know what’s going on. Families are hurting now. Already the job cuts have happened. People are losing their jobs, and they’re very traumatized right now. So to say, ‘You have to do this homework or else you’ll get a grade,’ — no. That is an unfair expectation on our part to have. We need to be supportive of them, and when they are ready, we are all ready for them.”
In addition, the school district is working to provide up to 1,000 Chromebook computers to students and families who do not have regular access to computers. The district has also partnered with Sparklight to create an internet Wi-Fi hotspot at Sparklight’s office at 235 S. 6th St. in Cottonwood.
One of the major ways that the schools are seeking to help families goes beyond academics. Each of the school districts is giving out free nutritious bagged lunches to any child under 18 who asks for them — reimbursed for districts by the state. In the past week, COCSD said they had increased from giving out 40 lunches on Monday morning to 400 on Thursday, which they did at two pick-up locations, the Cottonwood Education Services building at 301 North Willard Street and Oak Creek School at 11490 Purple Sage Road in Cornville. Mingus Union High School District reported passing the 300 meal mark as well, with students or parents driving by Mingus Union High School and picking up lunches on the curb.
“Folks aren’t even getting out of vehicles,” MUHSD Superintendent Mike Westcott said, highlighting the efforts to ensure that food services do not lead to the kinds of crowded gathering that social distancing efforts like school closures are aimed at preventing. “They’re literally just pulling up, rolling the window down, we’ll do a quick count, hand over what we’re doing, and they’re out of here. It’s real smooth — no groups, no hanging around. It’s pretty quick and efficient.”
COCSD is starting an effort this week to go beyond pickup by sending lunches out on bus routes, with a bus heading through Verde Villages and Camino Real neighborhoods and a second heading to Page Springs Road before heading back to the church at Zalesky Road and SR 89A.
In Camp Verde, the school district is providing pick up of both breakfast and lunch at the same time every morning at six locations — the Yavapai-Apache Nation Tunlii Community Center, Yavapai Apache Police Department, the CVUSD Multi-Use Complex, South Verde High School on Main Street, the Dollar General in Verde Lakes and the White Hills Trailer Park.
Clarkdale-Jerome School is also providing buses — one that heads up to Jerome ending at Jerome Park and another that drives down SR 89A toward Cottonwood, ending at 215 S. Pima St. The school district is requesting parents call or email the school to request a meal in advance.
A bill that as of press time has been passed by both houses of the Arizona legislature but not yet been signed by the governor [HB2910 in the House, SB1693 in the Senate] requires schools to continue to provide “general educational opportunities” if schools remain closed and does not require them to add supplemental school days at the end of the year to make up for lost time. It also requires school districts to keep paying their teachers and staff at full pay during the closures — something that both COCSD and Clarkdale-Jerome superintendents implemented administratively, but which required school board votes for both MUHSD and CVUSD.
Mingus is paying staff members who are asked to come into work — mostly administrative staff, custodial staff and food services — time-and-a-half pay for the hours they work, something none of the other school districts have indicated plans to do.
