This message was sent to ##Email## June 4, 2020       Home  |  Membership  |  Events  |  Advocacy  |  Careers  |  Academy Archive  |   Subscribe      SCHOOL LEADERS NEWS Too expensive to re-open schools? Some superintendents say it is Education Week Kathy Granger has a difficult puzzle to solve. As superintendent of the Mountain Empire Unified School District in southeastern San Diego County, she's forging ahead with plans to re-open school buildings this fall, with a staggering and expensive mix of new health and safety precautions because of COVID-19.  READ MORE Q&A: Dallas' Hinojosa says districts can't be 'wishy-washy' on closures, reopening Education DIVE Dallas Independent School District was just recovering from a tornado when Michael Hinojosa saw the news. In his 25 years of being an educator, "this virus was different from anything" he'd experienced before. Prior to other closures, the Dallas superintendent would usually get some clues from the media about what's going to happen next and how to proceed. But as word rolled out about the coronavirus, "the data started changing so fast and so significantly."  READ MORE School superintendents to ed tech: 'Please stop' THE Journal A Washington state superintendent set off a firestorm of support when she tweeted in mid-March to education companies: "...To every vendor, solution partner, researcher, education advocate, etc. please stop. Just stop. My WA superintendent colleagues and I confronting school closure need to focus on our communities. Let us do our jobs."  READ MORE Back to school? 1 in 5 teachers are unlikely to return to reopened classrooms this fall, poll says USA Today Most Americans expect schools to reopen in the fall, but a stunning number of teachers and students may not be there. In an exclusive USA TODAY/Ipsos poll, 1 in 5 teachers say they are unlikely to go back to school if their classrooms reopen in the fall, a potential massive wave of resignations. Though most teachers report working more than usual, nearly two-thirds say they haven't been able to properly do their jobs in an educational system upended by the coronavirus.  READ MORE Should all teachers loop with their same students in the fall? We Are Teachers There's nothing quite like that first day of school anxiety — getting to know a fresh set of 30 eager (or perhaps not so eager) faces, personalities, quirks and learning styles. It takes months to fully acquaint ourselves with our new students. And that's when we had the luxury of working with them in person. Now, as we face a variety of potential scenarios in the fall due to COVID-19, the back to school angst brings even more uncertainty.  READ MORE Less learning and late guidance: School districts struggle to help English language learners during COVID-19 crisis Chalkbeat Just a few months back, high school students learning English as a second language in the Adams 14 school district outside Denver spent 53 minutes a day in a special class dedicated to building up their language skills. When school buildings went dark and learning shifted online, that practice ended. High schoolers learning English in the heavily Hispanic, mostly low-income district started getting language assignments twice a week instead.  READ MORE    TECHNOLOGY Access to education technology is not enough Education Next When school districts began closing in mid-March, education-technology usage dropped over 60% in the first week. After that initial drop, usage has increased steadily, but with an alarming set of trends. According to an analysis of 2 million students and teachers throughout the United States, fewer students have been accessing education technology, but those who have been are accessing it 40% more often than they were prior to closure of schools. In other words, those who are using education technology are using it more, while those who are not are getting left behind. This is the very definition of an expanding digital divide.  READ MORE Survey shows big remote learning gaps for low-income and special needs children NPR Four out of 10 of the poorest U.S. students are accessing remote learning as little as once a week or less, according to a new survey from ParentsTogether, an advocacy group. By contrast, for families making more than $100,000 a year, 83% of kids are doing distance learning every day, with the majority engaged over 2 hours a day, the survey found. The nation's schools shut down in-person learning in mid-March, and only a few states, including Colorado, Montana and Wyoming, have experimented with opening classroom doors since then.  READ MORE Remote learning and mental health: Preparing for back to school Tech & Learning In this unprecedented period of extended remote learning, the mental health and well-being of students has been a concern. From students feeling isolated and dealing with depression to handling social-emotional challenges and experiencing long-term trauma, it's been a challenging time for everyone.  READ MORE    POLICY CORNER English learners and virtual learning during COVID-19: Will federal guidance help? Education Week A recently released U.S. Department of Education fact sheet reminds educators that schools must continue to provide support for English language learners during distance learning, but the instructions came nearly two months after most brick-and-mortar schools around the country had shut down for the year to curb the spread of the coronavirus.  READ MORE Watch: The CDC guidance on reopening schools, explained Education Week The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released long-awaited guidance on reopening schools that were closed in response to the coronavirus. The recommendations, which are voluntary, gave some parents and teachers their first detailed glimpse of how schools might change their operations to slow the spread of COVID-19. Among the highlights, they call for adults to wear masks and recommend them for students in areas where social distancing isn't possible.  READ MORE Feds lay out rules for English learners during closures Lanugage Magazine he U.S. Department of Education has issued a factsheet clarifying states' responsibilities to English learners and their parents during the extended school closures: Annual ELP Assessment — If a state educational agency cannot administer English language proficiency assessments in spring 2020 due to COVID-related school closures, the requirement will be waived, but some SEAs have already administered ELP assessments to their students and can continue.  READ MORE    EDUCATION HEADLINES How to assess English learners' needs from a distance? Here's some help Education Week Despite coronavirus-related closures, school districts are enrolling newly arrived students and children scheduled to start kindergarten in the fall — and federal law mandates that districts screen the students to determine if they need English learner support services. Districts are using home-language surveys to determine if students are eligible to take an English language screening test. But with social distancing requirements that prevent face-to-face screenings, schools must find other ways to assess how much support new English learners will need in remote learning environments or when classes resume.  READ MORE Poll: Teachers, parents wary of returning to schools without COVID-19 vaccine Education Week When and how schools will reopen is just one consideration for decisionmakers: A new poll suggests they should also consider whether teachers and families feel safe returning to buildings closed to contain the spread of the coronavirus.  READ MORE Hurricanes, earthquakes and COVID-19 make a dire trio for Puerto Rico's schools Education Week When her aunt told family members to start praying, Arianna Castro knew something was wrong. It turned out Arianna's older sister in Philadelphia had contracted the coronavirus. Arianna, 13, was already enduring Puerto Rico's COVID-19 restrictions, which were among the strictest of any state or territory during much of the pandemic. Like tens of millions of her fellow public school students, she'd been stuck at home since mid-March and trying to piece together some semblance of regular academic work. And like millions of U.S. children her age, she made that effort without dependable access to the internet, a problem that can be particularly acute for those in Puerto Rico.  READ MORE Planning for summer: Keeping emergent bilinguals, multilingual students engaged By Erick Herrmann (commentary) Many, many students around the world will not return to school until the fall at the earliest. Researchers are predicting that there could be great learning losses due to students not being in school, despite our best efforts to continue instruction through virtual or distance learning. The effect of emergent bilingual and multilingual students could also be significant. Yet there are some ways we can attempt to keep students engaged in learning, or at the very least engaged in continuing to build relationships with us as teachers and the school community.  READ MORE Supporting English learners with culturally responsive teaching eSchool News Culturally responsive teaching before COVID-19 and after should focus on keeping students' cultural norms and beliefs in mind and putting time into relating to students who have different life experiences, languages, and values than your own. Being culturally responsive requires a reflection on your own life experiences and how they've impacted your belief systems. Put simply, once we consider the experiences that have shaped us, we can appreciate that despite our differences, we are more alike than we think.  READ MORE     CAREERS New Postings Every Week on ALAS Website! 06/01/20 — Director of Language Acquisition, Berwyn South School District 100, Berwyn, IL 06/01/20 — Director of Special Education, Berwyn South School District 100, Berwyn, IL 05/29/20 — Teacher on Assignment — Administrator (Centennial High School), Peoria Unified School District #11, Glendale, AZ 05/29/20 — Teacher on Assignment — Administrator (Liberty High School), Peoria Unified School District #11, Glendale, AZ 05/27/20 — Assistant Superintendent, Information Technology, Fairfax County Public Schools, Fairfax, VA 05/27/20 — Assistant Superintendent, Special Services, Fairfax County Public Schools, Fairfax, VA 05/27/20 — Chief of Staff, Hartford Public Schools, Hartford, CT 05/26/20 — Associate Chief, Student Equity and Opportunity, Denver Public Schools, Denver, CO 05/26/20 — Elementary – ESL Teacher, Kansas City Kansas Public Schools, Kansas City, KS 05/26/20 — High School Math Teacher, Kansas City Kansas Public Schools, Kansas City, KS 05/26/20 — Instructional Coach – Arrowhead Middle School, Kansas City Kansas Public Schools, Kansas City, KS 05/26/20 — Instructional Coach – Harmon High School, Kansas City Kansas Public Schools, Kansas City, KS 05/26/20 — Middle School Math Teacher, Kansas City Kansas Public Schools, Kansas City, KS 05/26/20 — Special Education Coordinator, Kansas City Kansas Public Schools, Kansas City, KS 05/26/20 — Special Education Teacher, Kansas City Kansas Public Schools, Kansas City, KS 05/22/20 — Director of Budget and Finance, Pendergast School District, Phoenix, AZ 05/22/20 — Director of Personnel and Human Resources, Mount Vernon School District, Mount Vernon, NY 05/22/20 — Purchasing Coordinator, Pendergast School District, Phoenix, AZ 05/20/20 — Chief of Staff, Syphax Education Center, Arlington, VA 05/20/20 — Panel Manager, Office of Family Assistance, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families 05/19/20 — Executive Director, American School Counselor Association, Alexandria, VA 05/19/20 — Superintendent, Austin Independent School District, Austin, TX 05/16/20 — Superintendent, St. John the Baptist Parish Public Schools, Reserve, LA 05/15/20 — Executive Director — PK-12 School Leadership, Fort Worth Independent School District, Fort Worth, TX 05/15/20 — Superintendent, Martin County School District, Martin County, FL 05/15/20 — Superintendent, Piner-Olivet Union School District, Santa Rosa, CA 05/13/20 — .5 Spanish Bilingual Title I Literacy Interventionist, Urbana School District #116, Urbana, IL VISIT ALAS WEBSITE FOR MORE CAREER OPPORTUNITIES & INFORMATION! 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