Assistant teacher Erik Reynolds reads a story to students in a City of Las Vegas pre-kindergarten mobile classroom Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020. From left: Abigail, De’neah, and Osirus. The city uses the mobile pre-K classrooms to provide low-income pre-schoolers with a high-quality pre-school experience.
Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2022 | 3:47 p.m.
Clark County School District leadership stressed that the upcoming “pause” in instruction is a temporary pivot in response to the extreme staffing shortages fueled by the current coronavirus surge but not a precursor to longer-term cancellation of school or a switch back to distance learning.
Monica Cortez, CCSD’s assistant superintendent for the Student Services Division, said today that the break, which starts Friday, is an opportunity to recover from an infection or get tested, vaccinated or boosted. School will resume as normal for employees and students on Jan. 19.
CCSD went to online learning in March 2020 when the pandemic took hold. It stayed fully online until spring 2021, when it phased in a hybridized in-person and online plan. Schools have been in-person all this school year, with the option for all grades to transfer to CCSD’s online school, Nevada Learning Academy.
The upcoming “pause” is not a return to the distance education that families and teachers had in the first year of the pandemic, Cortez said.
“This was an adjustment to our calendar,” she said.
The district did not say how many staff members are out with COVID-19. A district spokesman said employees who call in don’t have to specify why they need to be out.
However, teacher absences in the first few days back from winter break track with the post-holiday coronavirus surge seen nationwide.
When school resumed on Jan. 5, a total of 1,643 teachers were out, the district said. On Jan. 6, that number climbed to 1,875. On Jan. 7, a total of 2,147 teachers called in.
The district has averaged 1,396 daily teacher absences this school year.
In those first three days back, the district was only able to fulfill about one in five requests made of the district’s pool of substitute teachers. Schools are stretching the staff they have on hand to cover absences internally, through a combination of putting campus administrators or central office staff into classrooms or paying teachers extra to cover classes during what would be their preparation periods, a common solution known as selling preps or prep-buys. Schools can also combine classes, sometimes in larger rooms like the library.
The reshuffling of the schedule will mean students will be off Friday and Tuesday, though teachers will be working from home. School was already scheduled to be out Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Cortez said absences tend to be high around long holiday weekends.
The days will be made up on Feb. 7 and April 25, which were previously contingency and staff development days.
Cortez said the hope is that all students and staff will stay home for the five days, not travel and potentially bring the virus back to work or school next week.
“We know that’s a huge ask,” she said.
Meanwhile, the school board on Thursday will discuss the district’s Plan for Path Forward Program of Distance Education and Plan for the Safe Return to In-Person Instruction and Continuity of Services. The plan is required for school districts under federal pandemic relief legislation and is continually under review.
