Dublin Schools Officials Share Plans For Fall K-12 Schedules

DUBLIN, CA — The Dublin Unified School District Board of Trustees met Tuesday night to discuss future schedules for all grades during distance learning, plans for the future high school in East Dublin, and the future of sports and extra-curriculars at the high school level.

Elementary School Schedule

For elementary school students, there will be two separate scheduling periods: from Aug. 13 to Sept. 4 and from Sept. 8 to whenever students can return to school. The former time frame will act as a time for students to acclimate to the new technology resulting from starting school remotely to building rapport with their teachers and peers.

“Due to the potential learning loss during spring and summer months, this period will [also] be utilized to assess the instructional level of students as well as identifying any learning gaps to address in our intervention block,” said Curtis Haar, director of elementary education at the Dublin Unified School District.

Middle and High School Schedules

In the latter half of the schedule, students will return to more traditional aspects of school being instructed in both reading, writing and science.

For students in grades six to 12, they will be attending school in a block format. This means students will attend three classes on Monday and Thursday, with the three other classes on Tuesday and Friday.

At the middle school level, each class will be 60 minutes of live, interactive learning with their teacher. The classes will take place in the morning. Before lunch students will have the option to attend small group check ins for extra support.

During the second half of the day, students will receive “flex time” from the three other classes they did not attend. These periods are only 30 minutes long and will be used at the discretion of the teacher to provide various instructional services. On Wednesdays, work will be conducted offline and students will be assigned to a student advisory period for a brief check-in with a certified staff member looking out for their wellbeing.

“We don’t want to see students end up with more homework than they would see in a traditional [format],” said Sheri Sweeney, DUSD director of secondary education.

At the high school level, students will take part in 75-minute classes in live and interactive learning with their teacher. Wednesday will be an offline day, similar to the middle school level. During the afternoons, high schoolers will be given additional “teacher-student support time” where students can go to any teacher for assistance. On Tuesday and Friday high school students will attend seventh period.

Sports

When it comes to sports, Dublin High School — in partnership with North Coast Selection (NCS) — has altered the seasons sports are played in. In addition they have condensed the fall, winter and spring sporting seasons down to winter and spring sporting seasons. The traditional number of athletic competitions has been slashed to eight from the usual 13 to 15 events.
“None of these solutions are perfect, I think everyone is doing the best with what we can do in the circumstances,” Sbranti told the board.

Since mid-June, Dublin has been running camps for its sports, band and color guards. Over 250 participants have shown up to practice in a socially distanced manner.
Coaches and faculty are limited to working with a so-called pod of up to 12 students at a time. In order to prevent future spread, athletes will be forced to select only one pod and multi-sport athletes could potentially participate in only one sport.

Sbranti said more focus has been placed on following proper hygiene protocols and ensuring voluntary participation for students to ensure they feel safe.
The first day of tryouts for any school sport is scheduled to be Dec. 14.

“I’ll state the one basic thing, [if] the health conditions are in December the way they are today … we are just going to have to push back the season even further because we will just not be in a position to offer athletic safety,” Sbranti said.

Miscellaneous

Discussion also began on the naming of the second high school in Dublin. Among the potential options were Alamilla Springs High School, Emerald High School and Parks High School. More than120 names were submitted for consideration.

The board is searching for “a name that is clearly associated with Dublin, a name that would maintain its relevance over time,“ said Chip Dehnert, a member of the board assisting in the naming of the high school.

The board also awarded a contract to Gradetech Inc. to make an addition in the number of parking spaces to the Dublin High School parking lot. The project is expected to take 90 days.

On Wednesday night, the Dublin Unified School District is hosting a town hall for any future questions from the community.

View the town hall here.