At the board meeting, Romick said teachers felt there had been communication lapses and that the handling of layoffs had eroded trust. Also, he said teachers had concerns over being asked to simultaneously teach of in-person and online students when most of DPS returns to school Nov. 9.
“There is nothing worse, nothing more devaluing and disrespectful to our educators, than to see news about district plans broadcast on social media before they have been informed by their own employer,” Romick said.
Lolli said she thinks everyone’s nervous and “in a state of unrest” right now when faced with unprecedented choices that sometimes have no right answer amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But she said she’s never afraid to speak to employees, and will restart some committees that had gone dormant. She called communication a two-way street and asked for employees to work at it too.
“Mr. Romick and teachers have been involved since we reopened in May,” Lolli said. “We’ve used teachers to plan the processes and to review skeletal plans and add meat to the bones. But I think because we don’t use (all) 953 teachers, there are teachers who often feel like they’re being told instead of being included.”
In addition to the superintendent-educator council, Romick requested a meeting with board leadership and administration within the next week to address respect issues, plus revival of monthly meetings between union and district leadership as called for in their contract.
Romick said one moment from August particularly affected teacher trust and morale.
“Unfortunately, this began right here at a board meeting, when a member of the community asked a question about layoffs. The response (from school board President Mohamed al-Hamdani) was, please don’t listen to rumors, along with laughter,” Romick said. “Over two months after that meeting, I stand before you tonight with over 100 of my members still laid off, and I assure you, no one’s laughing.”
Romick acknowledged that teachers were involved in planning the recent return to in-person classes for certain niches of students such as arts and career tech students. But he said there’s been too little information about the broader return Nov. 9.
One message from district leadership said each teacher should create a brief restart plan for his or her classroom, addressing seating charts, book bag storage, desk sanitizing, restroom procedures and more. He said that led some teachers to question why those issues were on their plate rather than part a district-wide plan created with county health officials.
Romick said he ended up crafting a template that teachers could start from and getting district approval for it. Lolli said many of those issues would be addressed in staff training Friday and next week.
A key question in training will be how K-12 teachers are supposed to simultaneously teach in-person students as well as remote students who Lolli said will be watching the teachers on live cameras.
DPS is doing a hybrid system where one group of students attends in-person Monday-Tuesday and another group attends Thursday-Friday. Romick said that raises significant classroom management questions.
Lolli said DPS is still working on some details on how the third group of students, those who are fully remote, will be handled. But she said combined in-person and online classes have been a reality since the 1990s in some places, referencing classes she taught at the University of Akron.
“People who have not taught distance learning don’t understand it,” Lolli said. “It’s not a huge issue. I stand and I teach, the camera watches me, I have a microphone, and the students at home see it on their computer screen.”
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