By LILY TINOCO | Reporter
Palisades Charter High School held a special Board of Trustees meeting on Tuesday, September 29, with the purpose of discussing and approving its Learning Continuity and Attendance Plan.
Pali High Chief Business Officer Juan Pablo Herrera spearheaded a portion of the meeting, sharing a presentation with attendees that explained the purpose of the plan.
Herrera explained that Senate Bill 98 has made several changes to accountability requirements for the 2020-21 academic school year. It no longer requires completion of the Local Control Accountability Plan, but instead, has established the Learning Continuity and Attendance Plan.
The Learning Continuity and Attendance Plan is meant to exhibit how Pali High is addressing gaps in learning, maintaining transparency, providing resources and support to address student and staff mental health and social-emotional well being, and more.
Pali High consulted with parents, students, teachers, administrators, classified personnel and bargaining units like UTLA to develop its plan.
The plan document extended into a number of topics, including attendance, learning and teacher expectations, and more.
When considering in-person instructional offerings, Pali High is exploring its options to bring students to campus, and the document offered five possible hybrid models.
“There [are] several factors that determine that, those are just samples,” Director of Academic Planning and Guidance Services Chris Lee explained. “There’s state, there’s city, district, county guidelines that we have to adhere to … but we are having the Town Hall to solicit feedback, we started preliminary meetings with stakeholders … it will be a process.
“As of now, where we are, school can’t open.”
In addition to that, Principal Pamela Magee touched on the fact that Pali High will have to consider its commuter students.
“As we weigh out all these different options, a big part of our conversation is going to be with families who travel to our campus and how they see themselves fitting into this equation,” Magee said. “Whether they’re going to continue … eLearning, which we will keep as an option … we’re going to be looking at cohorts also, trying to figure out how to make that transportation system work.”
The document also offered descriptions of the school’s spending, and what it plans to contribute its funds to.
“How are we addressing all [these] needs in the current year given the current pandemic-environment,” Herrera said. “The reason why there are costs and expenditures associated [is] because we need to provide some sort of transparency into the level of resources we are bringing to the table in order to bring this to life in the current year.
“There are additional expenditures … bringing students back would require investments in PPE products … increased transportation costs, so we need to be transparent about how we’re approaching this school year.”
Pali High addressed pupil learning loss as a result of COVID-19 during the academic school year in the document. Reportedly, Pali High has developed intervention teams to provide support to students. The intervention teams reach out to students and families to ensure that needs are met and supports are being offered.
There were also changes in the school’s pedagogy, and offerings of instructional videos to support distance learning resources and tools.
A motion was made to approve the 2020-21 plan with a few adjustments and passed.
The next board meeting will be on Tuesday, October 13, at 5 p.m.
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