School Reopening Guidance for Texas School Districts was given additional guidelines by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) on Friday, July 17, 2020.

The added guidelines are meant to give needed flexibility to help provide a smooth transition for students, teachers and staff and provide the safest and least disruptive style of learning the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year.

Most notable is School Districts can temporarily limit access to on-campus instruction for the first four weeks of school.

An additional four weeks may be allowed, if needed, as long as there is a board-approved waiver request to the TEA.

Any family that is lacking internet access and/or the required devices at home would still be entitled to on-campus instruction every day during this transition period.

Districts in an area of high levels of community spread COVID-19 retain the flexibility to delay the start of the school year.

High Schools, with school board approval, will be allowed to use a full-time hybrid model once students are transitioned back to on-school learning.

Hybrid means some classes are taught in a classroom setting, and some are offered through the virtual setting.

Schools are still required to make public to parents and the public, a summary of their plan for the upcoming school year.

The UIL article was not included in this week’s edition in lieu of this information, but do keep an eye out for it next week.

Types of Remote Instruction

Asynchronous Instruction
–Does not require all participants to be virtually present at the same time
–Defined as a curricular experience where students engage in the learning materials on their own time, interacting intermittently with the teacher via the computer, other electronic devices, or over the phone
–Eligible for all grades
–School grading policies for remote student work must be consistent with those used before COVID-19 for on-campus assignments
–Staff should check daily for student “engagement.”If students are engaged for the day, they would be marked as “Present-Remote Asynchronous” in SIS for PEIMS
–Students who are not “engaged” that day are marked absent
–“Engaged” means any of these three occur:
-Progress (as defined in the approved learning plan) in the Learning Management System (LMS) made that day
-Progress (as defined in the approved learning plan) from teacher/student interactions made that day
-Turn-in of assignment(s) that day

Synchronous Instruction
–Requires all participants to be present at the same time, virtually
–Defined as two-way, real-time, live, instruction between teachers and students, through the computer or other electronic devices or over the phone
–Students logged in at the teacher’s documented official attendance time are marked present for that day but would be documented as “Present-Remote Synchronous” in SIS for PEIMS reporting
–Students who are not logged in at the teacher’s documented official attendance time are marked absent
–Teachers take and post attendance on a specific schedule, just as with on-campus ADA
–A minimum number of daily minutes are required to earn full-day funding
-3rd through 5th grade –180 instructional minutes
-6th through 12th grade –240 instructional minutes
-PK -2nd grade are not eligible to earn funding through the synchronous model.
–Daily instructional minutes need not be consecutive
–School grading policies for remote student work must be consistent with those
used before COVID-19 for on campus assignments

Information taken from the TEA Overview of Remote Instruction Guidance SY 20-21