Dr. Lovett presented several objectives for his talk.  

He stated his overall goal was to present what schools have dealt with since a year ago March, and what they are doing moving forward? He also proposed to discuss the educational structure, the impact on students, teachers, parents, and the efforts of the Texas Education Agency, governor, legislature and some national initiatives that contributed to the situation.

Education Instruction
Starting last March, schools were asked to do something they were not  equipped to do – send kids home and address instruction remotely.

Immediately schools and teachers were faced with providing either asynchronous or synchronous education - old school versus new tech.

They could provide synchronous education, which is real-time education with teachers over the internet where the teacher is teaching and students are responding in real time. This situation is great if all students have devices and the internet.  

The other type of education schools and teachers provided was asynchronous, which is not real-time instruction. Schools sent packets home and students completed worksheets. The school came by and picked them up or students/parents dropped them off, and teachers graded them later.

Last March, the schools geared up to do real-time synchronous learning online.

Students
“It was a common thought that kids today are so techie. Kids today are called ‘digital natives,’ because they’ve been living with the internet their whole lives,” said Lovett. “Everyone thought surely they are going to be just wonderful and awesome when we get them in front of a computer, and we’re going to do school all day; and that was just not true.”

Kids are techie on social media, but many of them struggled to pay attention for 45 minutes, take a 10-minute break and do it again for another 45 minutes. Lovett said as many as 95% of the kids were not suited for that type of learning.

In addition to learning, schools provide kids physical needs like, exercise, recreation, as well as breakfast and lunch. If kids don’t go to school, they don’t get breakfast and lunch or physical activity. And for many of these kids, the best healthcare they get is the school nurse. 

According to Lovett, students struggled whether they were synchronous or asynchronous. Everyone struggled through last spring but geared up through the summer. In the fall everyone did a much better job – schools, teachers, students and parents.

Teachers
Teachers had to gear up to teach on a Zoom platform. The younger teachers fared better. Many of them have been educated through online courses.  Older teachers, who have been teaching for 35-40 years face-to-face, had a lot to learn. All teachers were forced to work in a new environment with no time to prepare. Starting this fall, teachers did a better job, because they had all summer to prepare. “It’s not perfect, but it was much better than spring,” said Lovett.

Rural schools that didn’t have enough teachers to support a hybrid environment, where half the students are home and the other half of the students were in the classroom, struggled the most. Teachers in rural schools had to teach both.  They had to wrangle kids in front of them and then look at the screen to see who disappeared off Zoom. For those teachers, it doubled their workloads. For the larger districts and schools, it was a little easier because the online and face-to-face could be divided.  Rural areas also didn’t have reliable internet.  

Another impact was on the substitutes. Most subs are retired people, so it became almost impossible to get subs during the time of the pandemic.

Parents
Parents were impacted because they had to balance work with childcare. Traditionally, kids have gone to school and parents have gone to work, but all of a sudden kids were home. Some had to choose between work and childcare and some had to juggle both and were not able to do a good job at either one. Parents were learning things and learning Zoom and trying to wrangle kids.

“Particularly if you got three different school-aged kids, they need to be in three different rooms because they’ve got three different lessons,” said Lovett. “One might be on a phone, one might be on an iPad, and one might be on a laptop.”

Lovett said that parents struggled but as the year has gone on, they’ve gotten better. Parents were under a lot of stress; there was a lot of expense with buying technology and then they had to determine how to keep kids safe. Some wanted to send their kids to school, and some were more worried about the health aspect and didn’t send kids to school.

Who Helped?

Region V
Region V is one of 20 quasi-governmental entities across the state of Texas. Lovett works directly for the commissioner of education but also has a board of directors. However, these regional educational centers do whatever schools in their regions need.  These entities are service centers, not the TEA or the principles; they don’t enforce anything. They support schools. If the school has a problem, they fix it. Region V was behind the efforts in a lot of areas. They showed how technology can work and delivered engaging instruction; helped with bandwidth, hardware and software.

Region 4 in Houston, the counterpart to Region V but in Houston, led a statewide effort to get free devices. Millions of devices were distributed.

 

Feeding…Region V was helping feed the students. “The school cafeteria workers did a Herculean job to get out there and to keep your kids fed when they were home,” said Lovett.

Texas Education Agency and Commissioner of Education
 We did away with the STARR test last year. This year the test was given but it won’t count for the school or for the child. It was given to gather the data needed to determine how far students have fallen behind. “We don’t know where to pick kids up and move forward if we don’t know where they stand,” said Lovett. “At least it was with good intention, and I do understand the logic behind it.”

Communication Guidelines for COVID Protocols
In Texas you have about 58 school districts and campuses with 10,000 plus schools. “We had to get those schools and those kids common protocols, and we failed miserably,” said Lovett.   He said it was impossible to stay consistent because the TEA would say one thing, a county judge another, and the local officials another.

Today, Lovett says messages are more consistent.

Legislature and Governor
They put a hold harmless for school funding very early in the pandemic. Schools get paid on their average daily attendance. A year ago, March, 40% of kids just disappeared, which meant that schools would have lost 40% of their funding if the legislature and governor did not hold them harmless through this school year.

PPEs
The 20 education service centers distributed millions of masks, sanitizers, face shields, thermometers. Twice over the last year, the center distributed millions of PPE.

Federal Government
For the schools everything starts at the federal level with the CDC and goes down from there through layers of government to try and keep kids safe.
U.S. Department Education waived accountability measures and now federal funding has come through.

Region V consists of 37 school districts with 95,000-100,000 kids. $11 billion of funding was released a few weeks ago for schools. Region V’s share is about $174 million. The schools get all this money. BISD is getting $56 million; PAISD is getting $27 million. Jasper is getting $7 million. The money flows based on percentage of low socioeconomic students. The poorer kids you serve, the more money is available to your school. That money is dedicated to learning loss recovery.
 

About four months ago, TEA’s best estimate based on data they had of kids’ learning loss is four months.  Although that doesn’t sound too bad, according to Lovett, who has been in education for 39 years, it takes one school year to pick up a month of lost learning.

“If the state of Texas can catch kids up in four years, they’ve done a herculean job,” said Lovett. “That money is going to help because it must be dedicated to learning loss recovery in some way, shape or form. We have four hardworking, powerful years ahead of us.”

Lovett encouraged Rotary members to let everyone know that the school has a big job ahead of them, and they are going to be gearing up to make it happen. It won’t be fixed overnight.

Q&A
Q: Even more teachers are retiring from pandemic and burnout, right?
A: Yes. The biggest resource we have right now in Texas is recently retired teachers. These teachers can be hired now with this federal funding to help bring students back up to where they are supposed to be. Lovett says there is a teacher shortage, and it’s worse than it has ever been.

 

Q: Can this lost learning be made up this summer?
A: Over the summer and I think most schools are planning for that.

Q: Since there is such a teacher shortage, and science and math teachers are especially hard to find, why can’t a kid in Burkeville go into a room and learn from a teacher in Beaumont? They could pay a stipend for that?
A: Schools are doing that already. Spanish teachers are hard to get. There are 11 Spanish teachers at Region V who are teaching kids across the state, as an example.

Q: What percentage of schools are fully open?
A: They all are, but if you want to keep your kids home, schools will still serve you.

Q: Will that option go away to stay home?
A: There will be schools going forward who continue to offer that option. Every school now has the option and ability to offer remote and face to face.

Q: Do you think the remote option will stay?
A: Yes. Now when a kid is sick, he/she can come to class remote and not fall behind. Additionally, schools will not lose funding over weather days because they can just offer remote learning for inclement weather. If kids are on the internet, they can be educated.