Bumps in the road were expected when classes made the unprecedented shift to distance learning only, but Limestone County Schools Interim Superintendent Mike Owens said the journey seems to be smoothing out.

During Tuesday’s meeting of the Limestone County Board of Education, Owens said there were a few setbacks in making sure students working online could access and complete their assignments. He said there were also a few students who hadn’t managed to get their pencil-and-paper packets yet.

However, staff had worked to overcome most of the setbacks and remaining packets would be distributed in the coming days.

“We haven’t worked out every bug, but everything that’s been brought our attention, we’ve addressed,” he told board members.

Board member Charles Shoulders asked how students were turning in their work if they chose the pencil-and-paper packet. Brad Lewis, executive director of curriculum and instruction for LCS, explained most students could use a smartphone to take a picture of the completed work and send it to their teacher for grading.

“We have some students who do not have that capability, so we’ve got a turn-in date of May 8 for the packets to be turned in,” he said.

Board member Anthony Hilliard asked if students who received their work late would still have time to complete it. Owens said he believed students would have enough time but admitted some students would fail to turn in work regardless of how it was presented and grades would be determined in part by where a student stood at the end of the third nine-week period of the 2019-2020 school year.

“Just as during a regular school year, we have some students who don’t get on track for what they’re supposed to be doing, and we’re going to find that to be the experience we see now under home schooling,” Owens said.

When asked if there would be consequences for failure to turn in work, Owens said the district would “give as much grace as we can during this time period because of the total disruption of society” by the COVID-19 pandemic.

There was also discussion of how distance learning would affect next year’s curriculum. Each summer is an opportunity for students to lose some of what they learned the previous school year, and officials believe that opportunity will be even greater because of all the time away from classrooms.

Lewis told board members there would be a need to change the curriculum, and the need would be greater for elementary students and for math courses. Owens said there would be a lot of curriculum review in the fall, but “we don’t know what form it will take now.”

Graduation

Many school systems are struggling to figure out how to honor their graduating seniors given the pandemic and the stay-at-home orders. Board members previously approved changes to the graduation schedule that would have gone into effect this year, and they discussed further changes Tuesday.

Board chairman Bret McGill suggested it may be best to space the schools out to one event per week and to set them for late in the evening.

“If you’re trying to do graduation in July, we’re going to do it in a football stadium, and if we thought the heat was bad in May … We might have to do graduation at 7:30, 8 o’clock,” McGill said. “I don’t mind doing one this week and one next week to keep the heat down if we do it outside.”

Owens said the goal is to have ceremonies in June or July, and they would hopefully be in a stadium to further support social distancing.

“We want to make sure we have it for them,” Owens said. “They’re going to remember this coronavirus 20 and 30 and 40 years from now, so we want to give them some high spots and touched-on moments for their senior year, too.”