Judson ISD to open virtually on Aug. 24

Judson ISD students and teachers will open school on Aug. 24 after the district’s board of trustees voted to approve a new calendar for the upcoming school year.

All Judson ISD students will open the year with remote learning, according to Superintendent Jeanette Ball.

“We will start virtually, meaning 100 percent of our students will begin school remotely, at home and receive instruction virtually,” Ball said following the district’s Aug. 6 meeting.

The Aug. 24 start date is one week later than the previous start date. The delay will allow staff to better prepare and will help ensure all students have the supplies they need to begin the school year virtually.

“We started to look at our calendar to see how we could adequately provide support for our teachers and still do a good job instructionally for our students,” Ball said. “We took a number of (professional development) days and front-loaded them, put them in the front,” she said, creating the new start date.

Steve Linscomb, Judson ISD’s director of communications, said the new start date was proposed “through a survey sent to employees earlier this summer as COVID-19 conditions evolved and official directives continued to be issued.”

Several options were part of the survey, including keeping the school calendar as previously approved.

“Aug. 24 was the start date option that garnered a significant majority of support from employees” and was approved by the Judson ISD board, he said.

The new calendar also creates a district-wide holiday on Election Day on Nov. 3, as many of the district’s campuses are used for voting sites. A Columbus Day holiday in October was eliminated.

Earlier, Judson experienced problems receiving the amount of Chromebooks it would need to outfit all of its students for virtual learning. Linscomb said the district initially obtained about 15,000 of the necessary 20,000 teaching tablets it would use to launch its virtual learning effort.

The district expected to have the remainder of the tablets in-house by this week, he added.

The district will have 100 percent virtual instruction from Aug. 24 through Sept. 4. After returning from Labor Day, the district will enact a “safe haven” option for students, in addition to remote learning.

“After Labor Day, those students who have special situations, or have no adult to stay home with them, will be allowed to go to a designated site to access the web for instruction and adult supervision,” Ball said.

A student qualifies for the “safe haven” site instruction if the student is a child of working parents, with no childcare available; a student’s home has no internet connectivity; a student receives special education service; or the students is a child of a first responder or active duty military.

Judson’s “safe haven” teaching runs Sept. 8 through 25. Beginning Sept. 28, all student instruction will be either face-to-face or virtual instruction, depending on the parents’ choice.

“What we ask of our parents is to make a choice between face-to-face or virtual options for your instructional needs,” the superintendent said. Commitment forms are being sent to all parents “in order to make the best instructional choice for your family,” she added.

Letters from more than a dozen teachers were read during the school board’s Aug. 6 meeting. The vast majority cited being anxious to start the year; the letters also expressed doubt about safety precautions and practices to be put into place.

Board Member Suzanne Kenoyer said she is in favor of the virtual start date being moved back one week to Aug. 24.

“Unprecedented times call for creative and flexible people,” Kenoyer said. “In order for us to make sure that our teachers are able to deliver a robust, rigorous curriculum virtually, we need to make sure we have support for all those teachers, including those who choose to teach face-to-face.”

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