Minn. school districts brace for first day of online learning

Families and students across the state are facing the new normal of staying home as opposed to going to school every morning.

With Gov. Tim Walz ordering school closures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, educators and administrators are working to ensure students can continue to learn online. Morning Edition’s Cathy Wurzer spoke to Anoka-Hennepin School District Superintendent David Law, on how the state’s largest district is working to provide for its students.

Law discussed the district’s immediate needs at the moment: providing child care for medical and emergency workers and to ensure children in poverty receive meals they ordinarily get at school. Anoka-Hennepin is responsible for over 37,000 students and making sure they all receive distance learning has been something Law and educators have been preparing for.

“All this week, we’ve been working on ramping up our teachers to do remote learning and what that looks like for kindergartners versus high school seniors,” he said.

Remote learning comes with its own host of problems on top of the ordinary difficulties that accompany teaching children. Questions about the logistics of having kids learn from home have risen and fallen with varying answers.

Law estimates 25 to 45 percent of students have the necessary technology they need to study online and believes that the district can fill in the gaps themselves by either providing equipment or providing packets students can fill out themselves.

“The direction is to check-in with every student every day,” Law said.

Besides available technology, another worry was providing internet access to students who didn’t readily have it. Comcast, the state’s largest internet provider, has reached out and promised a month of free internet so students could log on and learn.

With only a few months left in the school year and the pandemic’s unknown lifespan, a timeline of when students might return to classes has yet to be set. When asked if Law expects students to return to their classrooms this year the superintendent was uncertain. Kansas recently ended its school year, and Law doesn’t know how long the state’s closure will last.

One thing he did seem certain on was the districts dedication to being flexible and making the best of the situation.

Listen to the interview on the audio player above.

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