March 31, 2020

Greetings All,

Firstly, allow me to convey my deep sorrow for families and staff members who are faced with economic or health issues. Especially our seniors who expected this to be a monumental year of celebrating a major life accomplishment. Please know that Liberty Schools is dedicated to lessen the impact on everyone of our school-family members to the extent that we are capable. Seniors, don't give up on everything yet because I've seen some pretty good ideas already on how schools are thinking through the graduation fix and not just on-line versions.

Today the Oklahoma School Board voted to suspend in-person instruction and all extracurricular activities for the remainder of this academic year. That means that no students or teachers and certain staff will be asked to stay out of the school buildings so that people are not passing viruses to others. Each school will be communicating ways to gather personal belongings and necessary equipment/materials for instruction at home in the near future.

Beginning April 6 The State expects that we begin a distance learning plan which means that we provide an earnest teaching and learning program in order to provide the best outcomes for our students while they are at home. What will school be like from home? Teachers, students, and parents should not expect for it to resemble the classroom instruction they are used to and I personally believe this is a great opportunity to break away from some of our "old" thinking about what is effective modern education. I might be accused of being overly optimistic but the truth is, we are faced with no other choice.

What's there to be positive about? Well, we no longer face any pressure from state testing, certain rules about school times and calendar, nor restrictions on how we grade and make decisions on promotions. We are going to be free to re-think what schooling could look like and when we return I hope we adopt some new practices that we've found are more productive, interactive, and satisfying to our students and teachers.

The Principals, Director of Curriculum, and I have met to discuss our overall philosophy on how to approach this next week in which we must submit a Continuous Learning Plan that satisfies some loose guidelines that the State Department of Education (SDE) will be posting within days. The SDE has allowed us to meet with Teachers via technology starting next week and we will be engaging them in our discussion before making our final Learning Plan. We intend to give teachers great independence in their approach to engaging their students from a distance. We will have more specifics next week and may be asking parents to quickly submit surveys that we email out to determine what connectivity issues households might be facing so that we can find ways to include all students. 

In general don't expect that students will be asked to do daily assignments but rather weekly or small unit projects that give flexibility to parents and students juggling several subjects. Don't expect teachers lecturing or doing whole class type presentations as if the regular classroom was just being put on video. Don't expect the usual worksheet remedy such as what you may remember when there was a substitute teacher in class but rather students being asked to read, calculate, write, research, and create various ways of showing their learning. Expect a good degree of choice for parents and students to decide on their best way of learning and help for parents and students who find they aren't being challenged enough as well as help for those who are struggling to understand. Expect us to be lenient and understanding of any personal struggles that students are facing as long as we can trust that parents are holding high expectations for their children to be as engaged as possible.

We will have school and district office phones forwarded to a staff member or administrator by tomorrow so that if you have questions or needs you can get answers and help. We will not have regular district office hours because I have ordered that all staff only occupy school offices when they cannot complete their work from home. Therefore, one side effect of closures is that you will need to call ahead to ensure that someone will meet you or preferably find another means to get you what you need. Take care and be well! 

Phillip Garland, EdD