The Manhattan Beach Unified School District's school board on
Wednesday night approved
additional student groups for a return to school in person, in a hybrid format.
The school board gave its approval to three motions: one for a high-needs hybrid in middle and high schools; one for the grades 3-5 hybrid; and one to move forward with a 6th grade humanities hybrid.
Hybrids Moving Forward
High-Needs Hybrids:
The
board ratified the extension of the high-need hybrid by adding up to
seven "student support cohorts" (four at Mira Costa High School and
three at Manhattan Beach Middle School), with the option to add more in
the future.
Those students began on
February 22, with 21 attending at the high school and 34 attending at
the middle school. More than 150 students were invited to participate,
and a second round of invitations has been sent.
Additionally,
two new special education cohorts are slated to begin at the secondary
level on March 8. At Mira Costa, that will include a Deaf and Hard of
Hearing cohort and Learning Resource Center cohort; and at MBMS,
it will include resource English classes for grades 6, 7, and 8.
Grade 3-5 Hybrid
The
board confirmed that the grade 3-5 hybrid program will begin on March
1. There will be a morning cohort and an afternoon cohort on Monday,
Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, with Wednesdays spent in distance
learning (see diagram above).
Grade 6 Humanities Hybrid
The
board agreed to move forward with next steps in planning for 6th graders to begin in-person humanities classes on
March 8.
A tentative plan would split each humanities class into two.
From March 8-19, the afternoon humanities classes
would attend school in person for three hours a day, two days a week. (Half would attend on Monday/Tuesday, and half would attend on Thursday/Friday.)
From March
22-April 1, the morning humanities classes would return to
in-person school for three hours a day, two days a week, with half attending Monday/Tuesday and half attending Thursday/Friday. (Note that the morning cohorts are longer because there is a "nutrition" break in the middle.)
The groups would be split like that because current rules do
not allow a teacher to be with more than two cohorts in a week - so
therefore a teacher's morning and afternoon groups would have to come on
different weeks.
Spacing, In-Person Learning, Vaccines
The
board briefly discussed policies on TK-5 hybrid classrooms, where
the Department of Public Health has called for distancing student chairs
at least six feet away from one another, except where six feet of
distance is not possible after a "good-faith effort" has been made.
Using computer modeling of Manhattan Beach classrooms done
this summer, estimates showed that classrooms could accommodate between 11 to 25 students using these distances, with most classrooms able to accommodate
between 14 to 21 students. However, there are at least 13 classrooms
with more than 21 students (although it is unclear whether all the
students in a class would choose to return to in-person learning.)
Board members asked if it was possible to push the "good faith" guidelines as far as possible.
'"With
the vaccine headed our way, i think it’s time to for us be more
generous with our interpretation of the guidelines that the county has
established," said board member Sally Peel. "It’s my belief that with a
generous interpretation of distancing and the possibility of using
outside space or alternative spaces, there’s a way to make it work."
MBUSD
Superintendent Mike Matthews said that the schools do have some
situations where there will be less than 6 feet between students. However,
he added, "I believe putting more students in classrooms could be
helpful in many ways, but in my eyes it does not follow what the
regulations are stating right now."
Additionally, he noted that if the numbers keep on improving the way they have been, it's very possible that those regulations will change.
The
board also discussed what potential middle and high school in-person
schedules could look like.
While returning to school for just one or two
classes could be considered inconvenient, the two student members of
the school board jumped in to say that they would gladly experience
inconvenience for the chance to return to school in person.
"I
would be OK with going back and forth if was just a little bit of extra
work, just to get that in-person time," said student board member Emma
Clarke.
Joe Staszkow, the other
student board member, added, "I would also do anything just to be back
on campus again, and I don’t mind any hectic kind of schedule - I just
want to be back."
Matthews also
noted that the Beach Cities Health District will receive vaccines early
next week designed for school employees, and that about 85 percent of
MBUSD employees have said they want the vaccine. The vaccines will be
prioritized to go first to instructors working in person with IEP
students, then to employees working at a school site as of March 1;
then to employees working at a district site; and then all other employees.