Murray County Schools consider starting school in August, giving teachers 20 more days of instruction time. The county traditionally returns the Tuesday after Labor Day, which would be September 8, 2020.

Gladden Middle School is getting a comprehensive upgrade.

Since the board has already approved the original calendar, they will have to re-vote, which will happen in May.

Steve Loughridge, the Superintendent of Murray County Schools, said this would give teachers 20 extra days to make up for time lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic that shuttered schools on March 13.

“The concern we have is students being out of the building for six month,” Loughridge said.

He added that the schools would shorten their days by 30-minutes. The days were extended to allow the schools to stay out until after Labor Day.

However, it isn’t an easy decision, Loughridge said.

The recent destruction at Northwest Elementary School from a tornado combined with the extensive planned renovations of Gladden Middle School, which won’t be done by September, have already complicated the decision.

“The devil’s in the details,” Loughridge said. “It can’t just be make a decision, we have to look at the factors invovled. If Gladden and Northwest weren’t an issue, it would be easy to change.”

The board will make a decision at the May board meeting.

Kelli Reed said she wasn’t sure changing the dates was the best idea given the situation.

“This has been on my heart about Northwest since Monday. When I think of moving those babies to another school, I just don’t see the benefit in moving them for 20 days if Northwest is going to be ready in September.”

“It won’t be ready in September,” Loughridge said, adding that moving the students of Northwest to other schools was also not an option.

“It would be a logistical nightmare. We’re working on options, we just don’t know right now. It’s evolving daily.”

Northwest Elementary School suffered extensive damage after a tornado ripped through Murray County Easter Sunday.

Distance learning

The school system plans to keep going with on-line learning through the end of the year.

It’s been a learning process, said Barbie Kendrick, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning.

“We thought we’d be out for two weeks, so we sent home paper packets,” she said.

She provided the board with an outline of all the meetings held in response to the how the system responded to the virus.

“We discussed what would happen if went more than two weeks and what to do for students who didn’t have the technology to support on-line learning,” she said.

Kelli Reed, Murray County Board of Education

One issue that they have had to address was temporarily suspending the use of Google classroom in the county.

“I was hearing that teachers weren’t allowed to use Google classrooms,” said Sparky Roberts, a member of the board.

“We did ask the teachers to stop temporarily,” Kendrick said.

She explained that her staff was being told that parents with multiple children and only one computer were getting overwhelmed from the amount of time the children had to be in the Google classroom.

“If you have three children and one computer, it was really stacking up. So, we asked teachers to stop while we came up with a better schedule.”

Now, on-line students use a “Choice Board,” which has 20 assignments posted weekly over all the subjects. Students must complete 15. Teachers then use

Renda Baggett, Murray County Board of Education

Google classrooms once a week to touch base with the students. They also call, email, or text.

Renda Baggett questioned whether the work books the schools have for reading would be sent home to students during the shut down.

Kendrick said the current plan was to use the workbooks when school starts back to help students.

“We’ll revisit, but we think it’s a great resource because it has the standards laid out in them,” said Kendrick.

Did anyone think about checking out devices to the students, asked Sparky Roberts. He also asked if the teachers knew who had devices at home.

“We have, but not at all schools,” said Kendrick. “Right now, the teachers are asking when they call. But we may want to consider having it as part of the yearly paperwork.”

Roberts said the system had about 4,000 devices on hand at the schools.

Sparky Roberts, Murray County Board of Education

“Before Sunday, anyway,” he said.

Graduation

No definitive plans for graduation have been set, Loughridge said, but said he continued to discuss options with the high school principals.

“Ideally, everyone would graduate in July, but we don’t know if that’s possible,” he said.

One issue is that after late July, graduates generally go to college or have started working.

“We’ll do what we can,” he said.

The board also approved $3.4 million dollars to start the renovations to Gladden Middle School.

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