LEANDER, Texas — Texas schools across the state are having to deal with a new normal, and that comes with new challenges.
Leander ISD is one of many schools that's having to overcome issues with virtual learning. The district was forced to delay the first day of virtual learning by two days due to an unexpected technological mishap.
KVUE'S Tori Larned spoke with Bruce Gearing, Leander ISD superintendent, about that incident, other challenges they face and their plan to fix it.
RELATED: Leander ISD cancels first 2 days of virtual learning for high school students due to tech issue
Tori Larned: I'm joined now by Leander ISD Superintendent Bruce Gearing. Thank you so much for your time today, sir.
Bruce Gearing: Good morning and thank you for having me.
Larned: Yeah, absolutely. Now, I know it's been a pretty hectic time at Leander, and I see you were supposed to start virtually but you had to delay that by two days because of some unexpected technological issues. Now, since fixing that problem, how successful has online learning been?
Gearing: Yes. Thank you for asking. We did have to delay the start just for our high school students, so we did manage to bring our elementary and middle school students back on time on Aug. 13, and then our high school students on the following Monday. And since then, we've been steadily improving every single day. We are still continuing to have some bandwidth issues. So, of course, this is brand new for us. This is the first time ever that we've brought all the 42,000 of our students online at the same time. And that creates some issues, of course, for our internet bandwidth and our internet pipe. And so we continue to work diligently on trying to fix those issues and manage and to make sure that all of our staff and all of our students can access all the excellent tools and the learning that we have in our virtual empowered learning modules.
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Larned: Do you think those bandwidth issues you’re working with have impacted the quality of learning these students are getting, or are they pretty minimal?
Gearing: No, they definitely have impacted us. There's no doubt that we've had some significant issues. We realize that. I think we've got much better over the last several days. And we hope to continue to get better as we go.
Larned: Now, you're supposed to start increasing learning for those who want it on Sept. 8. But you have plans to put into for the waiver of the TEA extending network learning by four weeks.
Gearing: We are asking for the board to approve the waiver for the additional four weeks of remote learning. But that's not to continue 100% remote learning necessarily, although that may be an option. But we are planning to start phasing students back in on Sept. 8. If the board approves the waiver, we'll start with 25% of our kids for the first two weeks and then start to bring back more and more kids. Based on how things are going, based on the numbers and of course still contingent on board approval next Thursday for that waiver.
Larned: A big question a lot of people have is COVID-19 cases at the district. Now Texas schools are required to report COVID-19 cases to the State, but we've heard from some teachers working from the classroom who were concerned about the transparency of the process, wondering if they'll know exactly when they've been exposed to COVID-19 from other individuals. So the main root of the question here is, what is the justice doing to be as transparent as possible about COVID 19 cases so students and staff know they are safe walking through those doors?
Gearing: So we have several teams that are working really hard on our protocols and procedures to make sure that we're abiding … by the health standards that have been set by both Austin, Travis County Health Department and Williamson County Health Department. We also have to be aligned, of course, with the teacher guidance that we have on attendance and reporting. And so we're making sure that we take all of those pieces of information, line them out and align our documents with all of that guidance. We're trying to be as transparent as possible. We're a large institution, and so I have no doubt that there will be times when we won't get it 100% right. As soon as we find out those issues, we're addressing them and working on solving them. And we'll continue to put the safety of our staff and our students first.
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