Please continue to visit this webpage (pps.net/fall2020) for the latest information, resources, messages to families and other important details. 

Our new online learning model is intended to be different than the student learning experience of this past spring. We will follow more rigorous, now-published Oregon Department of Education guidelines regarding instructional time, attendance, grades, and assessments. Our Instructional Leadership Team has been developing our comprehensive distance learning plan and finding ways to improve distance learning for our students, staff and families.

After spending the first two weeks of the school year getting connected to their teachers and classmates, becoming oriented to their learning platforms and talking with counselors and other staff about potential social emotional needs and supports, students will follow a regular weekly schedule and will have daily interaction with their teachers; grades and attendance will be taken. PPS students will experience a meaningful improvement over what we offered in the spring.

Sample weekly schedules for elementary, middle, and high school students will be posted and shared soon as we continue to collaborate with school leaders and educators. The below represents both ODE guidelines and current district plans:

PK through Grade 8 students will meet with their teacher regularly and participate in instruction in each of the content areas. Students will follow a predictable schedule each day with breaks for breakfast, lunch, and physical activity built into the day. Social Emotional learning and support will be integrated into the week and students will continue to have access to their counselor and other supports as needed.

High school students will take four classes per semester and we will make modifications for AP and IB students as well as students who need additional support. Students will follow an online bell schedule and meet each day with their teachers. Social emotional supports will be integrated into the schedule and students will continue to have access to their counselor and other mental health supports as needed or requested.

We are working with our labor partners and community-based partners to shift resources in order to provide multiple types and levels of support to students and families. As we identify these supports for the coming school year, we are taking into account the different needs of our students, especially those disproportionately impacted by this pandemic, our Black, Native and Students of Color. We are also considering the unique needs of our English Language Learners and students with special needs. In addition, family and staff survey feedback, focus groups, and comments provided through our Fall 2020 webpage, have been essential to our planning thus far, and we will continue to ask for your input as we finalize the ways we can help.

School counselors, social workers and other student supports will also be working to connect with families to meet the specific needs of students. We have heard from some families that staff-supervised “learning hubs”, with social distancing and other health protocols in place, would be helpful to ensure a continuity of learning for students in underserved communities.

Along with any additional support we introduce this fall, please know that we will continue to provide meals and access to technology. In partnership with The Fund for PPS, we expect to continue to support families access to internet connectivity, as we have since March.

As we know, special education services are best provided through in-person support and guidance. We will provide specially designed instruction for students through a virtual learning model. We are working on an online curriculum to support families to support their student’s learning. We will continue to provide speech and language services, small group instruction, occupational and physical therapy, and access to general education online learning opportunities, based on students’ IEPs.

There will be some services that we will not be able to provide in a virtual environment, such as 1:1 paraeducator supports. We will review IEPs with families as needed to make appropriate amendments for a virtual setting. As always, please contact your case manager with questions regarding your student’s services and if you have additional special education questions, please contact our special education department.

While some evaluations will continue to be provided online within each school team, we are working to organize and implement an alternative option such as test centers, in order to continue with our Child Find obligations.  If your child is in process of an evaluation, we will  contact you once school begins to schedule online and possibly some in-person testing, when it cannot occur through a virtual manner.  We will follow all health protocols in order to ensure a safe evaluation experience for you, your child and our evaluation staff.  If you do not hear from your school by the middle of September, please contact our special education department for assistance. 

Last spring, PPS provided thousands of computers to students who lacked available computers at home. We will continue to lend computers to students who need them, and will soon share details of how to access district computers for use in online learning this fall. As was the case last spring, students who already have an available computer at home can continue to use their own devices. 

The Oregon School Activities Association recently announced that all OSAA-sanctioned fall sports will delay starting until September 23 (previously August 27). Also from OSAA:

If Fall activities aren’t able to be held in the Fall, the OSAA Executive Board is committed to working with its contingency groups to exhaust all options for these activities including shifting, condensing, or stacking seasons, like our neighbors in Washington and California, with the fundamental objective of providing participation opportunities for students. These changes may ultimately force schools into choosing which programs they will offer and students into choosing between activities, but the Board believes that a potentially difficult choice is better than no choice.

If we are unable to gather students in classrooms due to COVID-19 conditions, it is unlikely that we could gather student-athletes for practices and games. We will have more information for students and families in the coming days.

PPS online platforms will look familiar to students who participated in PPS-HD. PK-through Grade 5 classrooms will use Seesaw as their learning management platform; Grades 6 through 12 will use Canvas. Teachers will use Atlas for core content units and instructional resources.You can find information about these platforms on our Digital Toolkit page.

We are putting together a number of orientation and onboarding tools for students and families to get familiar and comfortable with all PPS platforms.

The first days of school will certainly be different than any year before. Students will spend the first two weeks of the school year getting connected to their teachers and classmates, becoming oriented to their learning platforms and talking with counselors and other staff about potential social emotional needs and supports. Teachers will spend much of these first two weeks  in professional development sessions.

We are working with our child care partners and exploring ways to provide learning support and child care. Input from PPS families and employees about the need for this support is a critical part of our planning; we plan to send a needs survey to PPS families and school staff in the next week. Any program offered would have to comply with COVID-related space and group size requirements. 

Fall 2020: Update for July 20

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Dear PPS Families,

We know you are eager to learn how students will safely begin school in the fall. The start of this school year is especially complex as we continue to adjust to the most up-to-date information from state and local education and health leaders. In the meantime, you can find more information about our planning process in our July 11 message (below on this page) to families and staff. 

Please remember: we will only reopen school buildings if we can safely do so. If we are not able to safely open school buildings, all teaching and learning for every student will take place virtually/online until it is safe to return to school in person.

As we work on our reopening plans, we are taking into account the different needs of our students, including the support required for our students with special needs. We are also observing our guiding principles and Theory of Action, paying particular attention to how we can prioritize our students who have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic; specifically our Black, Indigenous and students of color. 

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Superintendent Guerrero on National Radio Program

PPS Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero was part of an hour-long On Point segment on school reopenings last Wednesday. The program aired on WBUR in Boston and nationally through NPR. You can visit the station’s site and listen to the interview by clicking here.

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July 14 Board of Education Meeting

A number of PPS leaders presented to the Board of Education last Tuesday, giving Directors an update on Fall 2020 plans. You can watch this presentation and follow-up questions from Directors, by clicking here.

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Find All Fall 2020 Information in One Place

A reminder that this re-entry webpage is live at pps.net/fall2020. Here you will find the latest messages to families and other important information. In the coming days and weeks we will be adding information about resources and support, along with help for students and families related to online learning at PPS. You can expect to see other tools and videos on the page, as well, beginning next week.

The page also includes a link to a form for families to ask questions and share their comments about Fall 2020 (in right column).

Until then, we wish you a healthy week and ask that you join us in preventing the spread of the coronavirus by wearing masks in public and following physical distancing practices. Our ability to safely open schools depends in large part on the broader health of our community.

We will continue informing you as we have more definitive information available early next week.

Thank you for your patience.

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Dear PPS Families and Staff,

We know that you all are eager to know our preliminary plans for Fall 2020. We want to uphold our promise to keep you regularly updated on our planning and preparation, which began in March and continues through these summer months.

As with any decision we make, our highest priority is the health and well-being of our students and staff. Our emerging plans and decisions are relying on the latest public health guidance and guidance from the Oregon Department of Education as we prepare for re-entry. It is important that our students, families, and employees understand that we will only reopen school buildings if public health experts say it is safe to do so. If we are not able to safely open school buildings, all teaching and learning for every student will take place virtually/online until it is safe to return to school in-person. The online learning experience for students will be different than what was offered last spring, including access to additional instructional time and digital resources. 

As we develop our reopening plans, our key considerations are how to best serve and support the academic learning and social emotional needs of every student, particularly students of color. We are also taking into account the differentiated needs of our students, including the specialized support required by our students with special needs. We will continue providing meals and other primary supports, like technology tools, to our students. We are also observing our guiding principles and Theory of Action, paying particular attention to how we can prioritize our students who have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic: Black, indigenous and students of color.   

We are working diligently to safely commence the 2020-21 school year on September 2nd. What the first week of school, the first month, and the first semester will look like is dependent on circumstances related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Again, all of our plans will be based on up-to-date guidance from health authorities. Right now, our preliminary plan includes the following:

We are proposing a model in which the first two weeks of school, September 2-11, would be dedicated to a number of important foundational social emotional and academic components to ensure students, educators and families are ready for the learning ahead. These activities would be conducted virtually/online and include: 

• Teachers individually connecting with students.
• Multiple opportunities and ways for families to become familiar with the learning technology that will be used by their children.
• Training for teachers on using all teaching and learning technology and new health protocols.
• Social emotional engagement in order to help ease the anxiety and stress of the past months. 
• Ensuring technology is available so that every student has a working device and online access, especially our “new to PPS” students.
• Health and wellness processes are practiced and in place prior to students entering the buildings.

This time will allow us to make sure our online learning platforms are working well on a large, district-wide scale and that students and teachers are ready, connected to each other and comfortable with the learning technology they will be using. 

Following this proposed initial two-week orientation, our current plan includes students returning to schools and engaging in online learning in assigned smaller groups on September 14. Currently, our re-entry models, including school and student schedules, are flexible in anticipation of various pandemic-related scenarios. We will update these models as we learn more and in consultation with public health experts. 

Our goal is to ensure that student learning is taking place five days per week, regardless of location. As we balance physical distancing requirements (6 feet apart) with our desire to maximize in-person instruction, our current modeling suggests that students could be in their school buildings at least two days a week. Online learning would be a part of every student’s learning experience, as we prepare for the continuity of learning in any circumstance or condition. We want to support our students, educators, and family members in their ability to be flexible as we switch between an in-class and online model of learning, depending on circumstances and changing health and safety conditions.

• Pre-K through 8th grade: We are currently developing an A/B cohort model.
• Cohort A would attend school in-person on Mondays and Tuesdays.
• Cohort B would attend school in-person on Thursdays and Fridays. 
• Wednesdays would be spent sanitizing classrooms between cohorts and for continuing professional development and training for teachers and staff. 

The A/B cohort model allows us to maintain physical distancing and spacing requirements; in other words, we would have about half as many students in classrooms at one time. Elementary-age students would each be assigned a homeroom teacher who will remain consistent during students’ learning experiences. We are exploring a similar homeroom teacher model for middle school students.

• We are considering a model in which High School students would take four classes per semester for a total of eight classes for the entire school year, and using a cohort model similar to PK-8 (i.e. students would spend two days per week on campus). This schedule would allow students to complete a year-long course in one semester. For example, a student may have English in the Fall semester and History in the Spring semester. We believe that allowing students to focus on fewer classes will help them be more successful in an environment that is, at least for part of the year, a hybrid model of in-person and online learning. 
• Extracurricular and other experiences: We know that classroom instruction, while the basis for public education, is only one part of a student’s school experience. We will share information about elective classes, athletics, extracurricular activities, IB and AP programming, arts, CTE and more as soon as we can. 

We continue to review full-time online learning options for families who prefer not to send their children to physical buildings at the start of the school year. More information will come soon.

Rolling online learning: Throughout our planning, we have remained health focused, student-centered and flexible, given that so much of what we will include in our reopening plans is out of our control. At any point in time we may have to return to full-time online learning. We are preparing for this real possibility and are putting plans in place to move in an agile fashion in and out of online learning as needed for a classroom, a school building and district wide. 

Teachers will be provided with ongoing professional development to support them in the implementation of their instructional program. There will be a focus on assessing and monitoring student progress in order to identify where students may need additional support. In every potential school model that we are considering, teachers will keep a focus on maintaining a continuity of learning for students, whether they are in classrooms or learning online. 

We will continue to be adaptable, understanding that adaptability is something every one of us--students, educators and staff, parents--has had to rely on the last four months. No scenario for fall is perfect, but we are working hard to give everyone in our school community the best possible option for teaching and learning this fall.

We will keep you updated as we work with public health experts, our families, labor partners and district stakeholders, which includes feedback we have already received from many PPS families through our survey. 

We value your input and feedback as we refine this preliminary plan and we welcome your comments and questions. Next week we will share a way for you to ask ongoing questions related to our reopening. Look for regular updates in your inbox and the latest information at pps.net/fall2020. 

Thank you.

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Dear PPS Families,

We hope you are enjoying a safe and healthy summer break. Thank you for sharing your feedback on the re-entry survey we recently sent to you. While there are still numerous details to finalize, we wanted to update you on where we are with our efforts to ensure healthy beginnings for the 2020-21 school year. 

Of note, we are grounding all of our decisions in racial equity and social justice and following these guiding principles as we work through this process:

• Ensure the health and wellness of our staff, students and schools. 
• Transform curriculum and instruction, and provide innovative learning environments to ensure a robust instructional core that provides cognitively demanding experiences and opportunities accessed by all students so they successfully build the knowledge, skills, and dispositions reflected in the PPS Graduate Portrait.
• Cultivate connections and relationships within our school buildings and with our broader community.

We will have much more detail and background information to share with you next week, but here's what we are focusing on as we finalize our plan for Fall 2020:

• Prioritizing our Black and Native American students, following our Theory of Action and engaging with groups who have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. 
• Prioritizing our students who receive special education services and focusing on student needs and health requirements. 
• Following Oregon Department of Education guidance, and strictly adhering to public health standards in response to COVID-19. 
• Focusing on connecting with our students in order to access basic needs, including meals, computers, social emotional support and internet access. 
• Working with our labor partners to discuss, determine and decide the best ways to prepare and train for what will be another atypical school year. 
• Committing to provide the best possible learning experiences for our students, regardless of delivery model. 
• Continuing to plan transportation, custodial services and many other operational services that are essential to our schools and students in order to accommodate the physical distancing guidelines and sanitization requirements. 

Thank you for your patience and understanding. We look forward to sharing more with you next week as we finalize our plan for Fall 2020. We wish you a safe, healthy and happy Independence Day weekend.