JACKSON – While the Jackson Switlik Elementary School was recently closed following an incident of two positive cases of the coronavirus, the district is looking ahead to a time when live instruction can be expanded.
Superintendent Nicole Pormilli spoke to members of the Board of Education, fellow administrators and the public during a recent Board meeting about the potential next steps the district will take to provide more live instruction for students.
Those at the Switlik school moved to full remote for several days to “ensure the safety of our students and staff in that building,” Pormilli said.
She noted in her phase 2 update that “during our last Board meeting I shared with everyone that our plan was to hopefully move to more in person instruction. We said at the beginning of the fall that we were looking forward to bringing back more students as we could throughout the school year.”
Pormilli added, “we definitely would like to see more students back. We surveyed our staff and our community and I’d like to provide an update on where we’re at in moving to our next steps. Health and safety must come first. It is our number one goal.”
The superintendent said that the district had committed to making a plan that is safe and meets the criteria of the state requirements and responds to the community’s needs and also meets the resources of the district’s facilities.
She said the original goal of phase 2 was to evaluate, collect feedback from families and staff and to monitor data and health conditions throughout the fall. “We are definitely committed to more in person instruction. We know that it is necessary.”
“We began to develop a plan to put more students together so that students could have school on shortened days five days a week with their teachers. We knew the full remote program would still remain intact. We have looked at our data and our intensive health and safety plans have really allowed us to create a safe learning environment,” Pormilli said.
She acknowledged the uptick in cases of the coronavirus but added that in all incidents within the district, “They are connected to outside sources. The virus was not spreading in our schools. We recognize it is time to advance our plans. The plan we had for the fall was a good plan.”
Pormilli said the plan used was designed for the reopening of the school year and to get the district moving forward.
“The data around the state does not support (increasing in-person education) at this time. We have in our town an increase of COVID positive cases. While we monitor all in-district cases, we also monitor the weekly report that is put out by our health department in the state of New Jersey,” she added.
“Now is not the time to bring more students to our schools,” she said. Pormilli added that during the fall the northeast region moved into the moderate level of cases and have since moved to a significant increase and have reached the high level of positive cases.
“It is not the time for us to be adding more people in a classroom because it would be more difficult to social distance. What we’ve been doing so far has been working and we want to stick with that. However, based on those current conditions in our health and safety we also know we must do more with in person instruction for our students,” Pormilli said.
She said that the plan now is to pivot to synchronous instruction for its two groups of hybrid students. “The full remote program will remain the same. The advantage of going to synchronous instruction will allow us to increase instructional time with teachers every day.”
Students will be able to connect with their teachers not just on the day that they are in the classroom in person but also at home with remote learning. Their non-in person day will be longer instructional time for them, according to the superintendent.
“There will be less independent time and more engagement with their peers in their classroom and their teacher and it will provide much more instructional time and lesson time and it also allows in the afternoon for a time for extra instruction, intervention and support for students,” Pormilli said.
“Any opportunity for the students to see teachers and adults I think will enhance the learning experience,” Board member Gus Acevedo said.
Pormilli added, “those students who may need to quarantine at home may now be able to sign in everyday and learn along with their peers and their teacher in the classroom which will have significant impact on our instruction.”
Remote learners who desire to switch to this hybrid model will have the opportunity to do so later in the school year, possibly in January following the district’s holiday break period.
Board President Michael Walsh said “this is a great tool that the teachers can use as a resource to show demonstrations and see things in the classroom at the same time. I think this is a step in the right direction.”
