Fairbanks Local Schools will use federal COVID relief money to fund a series of programs aimed at mitigating the loss of learning caused by the virus.
Superintendent Adham Schirg said the district received about $220,000 of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funding, which was part of the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act signed into law in December. He said that will be used for things like summer school, intervention, tutors and other measures to help students make up ground lost while students were not part of in person learning because of the pandemic.
Earlier this month, Gov. Mike DeWine asked school districts to put together plans to address a loss of learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. DeWine suggested options such as extending the school year, extending the school day and summer programming. School districts will submit a report to the state over the next several weeks.
Schirg said Fairbanks began this work much before the governor’s announcement.
“I think one of the challenges of blowing out an extended school year or extended school day is that it is very tied into collective bargaining agreements so we are looking at how do we use the time that we already have to address some of those learning gaps,” Schirg said.
The superintendent said the district’s Response to Intervention teams started by identifying students that need additional support, including coming to school for four days while the district was still in hybrid learning.
“Our elementary school continues to identify individuals for reading intervention during their school day,” Schirg said, noting that has “picked up, obviously even more because of our student’s learning level one (fully in-person) at the elementary school since the middle of January.”
He said the district has already started planning summer school and has started identifying both students and staff for the additional learning. Officials said it is more than likely the district will host two, three-week sessions with elementary and middle school students focusing on math and reading intervention and high school students focusing on credit recovery.
The district is also developing plans for students want to continue more skills-based learning in the summer.
Beginning Monday, all students will be on campus for the first time since November.
“This is an exciting day for Fairbanks,” Schirg said. “This is possible because of all the hard work of our families, students and staff.”
Students will attend class in person on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Students will be learning remotely on Wednesdays to allow the district time to deep clean.
“We intend to move to five days following spring break,” Schirg said. “This allows all staff who choose to get the second round of the COVID-19 vaccine to have that access on March 13 as well as monitor data to see if there are any changes inside our school if there is a need to shift in another direction, but it gives us some time built in to monitor any changes that may occur.”
Schirg said he met with the district’s student advisory council. He said members were asking about spring activities.
“We feel positive we are going to be able to have something,” Schirg said. “It may not look like what a traditional prom looks like, but it will be something.”
He said the modified prom, “is going to be more of a banquet.”
He said the banquet will follow event guidelines established by the state. He said school staff has been, “working hand in hand with the Union County Health Department to make something happen for our students.”
“If we continue to see positive direction in terms of case rates, in terms of cases, we may even see some loosening of guidance for those activities moving forward,” Schirg said.
He said the district is also optimistic about graduation.
“As we have talked through graduation with the health department, there really is not a lot of concern because ours is outside.”
He added that, “obviously there is going to be some limitations on the number of people that students can have, but being able to execute it and do it safely is something we feel very confident with and we will be working through what that may look like.”
He said there will be other spring activities that will need vetted and modified for COVID precautions.
District treasurer Aaron Johnson said the district got some good news about state funding.
“We got some of our state funding restored, about 50% of our reduction restored so that is going to help our fiscal year,” Johnson said.
In May, DeWine cut funding to Fairbanks by $266,899, or $259 per student, representing about 2.13% of the district’s operating expenditures. The move was in response to fears state revenue would be down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Johnson said state funding for the district, “will be restored for the next two years at our 2019 level.”
For the most part, that’s good news. State officials had warned districts there could be additional funding cuts for next year.