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Sunday  •  March 15, 2020

Sunday Night Thoughts…

By Steven Keller

Starting tomorrow, our students’ lives will be upended and their education will indefinitely be put on hold. With it looking likely that the schools will not reopen on March 30, it is very important that a continuity-of-curriculum plan be laid out soon to all HCPSS students, staff and families —either some sort of contingency remote curriculum with ample educator & staff support OR an estimated plan for how the lost weeks will be made up for after schools reopens (as long as school re-opens before next Fall).

 

Communication regarding this issue is essential. The number of recent social media posts related to this issue accentuates the urgency and importance of this matter to our community.

 

Neither teachers nor the teachers’ union should be blamed for this situation, and it is unfortunate that some community members have chosen to target them. In my own opinion, responsibility for clearing up this confusion lies with the HCPSS administration and the Board of Education. I hope that they soon will provide more detailed guidance and ideally a plan that ensures that Howard County students will receive as much of their March through June curriculum as possible, either during this shutdown or with make-up weeks afterwards (as long as the shutdown ends prior to August).

 

With that in mind, I encourage all community members to keep discussions of this issue focused on two things:

 

1) Respectful, rational encouragement for the HCPSS administration & Board of Education to provide a viable Continuity-of-Education plan for our students that lives up to the standards that Howard County students and families have come to expect.

 

2) Community-based solutions for continuity-of-education for ALL Howard County students in the off chance that our HCPSS administration ultimately fails to deliver a viable plan.

 

We are all in this together and will only make it through this troubling time by maintaining reason respect for one another, by encouraging our leadership to help navigate our students safely and with their education minimally disrupted through this situation, and by coming up with creative solutions to provide the best possible continued education for all of our students in the meantime.

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