COVID-19 Operations Written Report - CATCH Prep Charter High, Inc. Patricia D. Smith, Executive Director (323) 293-3917 ...

COVID-19 Operations Written Report

          CATCH Prep Charter High, Inc.
        Patricia D. Smith, Executive Director
           psmith@catchhighschool.com
                   (323) 293-3917

        Board Approval and Adoption Date:
                  June 1, 2020

1. Provide an overview explaining the changes to program offerings that the LEA
has made in response to school closures to address the COVID-19 emergency
and the major impacts of the closures on students and families.

As part of CATCH Prep’s ongoing commitment to transparency and collaboration, we
share timely and relevant communications with students, teachers, families, and staff
members in a variety of ways. Leading up to the closure of schools on March 13, 2020,
CATCH had already mailed and emailed the following two communications to all
stakeholders regarding the health and safety protocols administered by the school
(including the washing of hands, soap availability, hand sanitizer access, and more) as
well as the potential for school being closed for a period of time. In a March 11th letter
home, we advised parents:

        “While health officials are not recommending closure of any K-12
        schools in Los Angeles County as of now, we are actively planning for
        how we would continue instruction even if students can’t come to
        school. Should that situation arise, CATCH is planning for all
        assignments, assessments, curriculum, and instruction to take place
        online in our virtual Google Classroom environment for each course a
        student is scheduled in. At the same time, we also suggest families to
        think about their own preparedness for any potential school closures,
        such as: arrangements for childcare for parents who must keep
        working, employers’ policies for parents who must care for children,
        internet access, food and supplies needed to support kids at home full
        time.”

It is for this reason that CATCH Prep took decisive action to equip all students with a
chromebook to take home before the eventual closing of campus on March 13, 2020
and before the letter below was texted, emailed, mailed, and printed up and taken home
by every CATCH student by the end of the school day that Friday.

This early action has helped us put together our distance learning program quickly and
with complete access for all 100% of CATCH students and families. In addition, our use
of the text messaging system SIMPLETEXTING has created quick two-way
communication possibilities for all of our students and families with the school.

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June 2020

The backend of the SIMPLETEXTING program allows for SMS and MMS messages
(which can included pictures, video, and other forms of media), and has proven vital to
communicating long, detailed messages to all of our stakeholders and partners.

In addition, CATCH has used our CONSTANT CONTACT emailing system, as well as
SIMPLE TEXTING, to inform our stakeholders of the Weekly Virtual Assembly /
Community Meeting we host online every Wednesday @ 10am. This event, in which
students and parents are all invited, has received a 90%+ participation rate as the result
of daily and weekly attendance reminders and simple, one-click instructions on how to
access the Assembly which are sent via text. Once completed, we post all Community
Meetings online at our website for parents to access or review at their convenience
https://www.catchhighschool.com/weekly-community-meeting.

2. Provide a description of how the LEA is meeting the needs of its English
learners, foster youth and low-income students.

CATCH is committed to ensuring that the unique educational needs of all students
(English Learners, Foster Youth, Low-Income, and Students With Disabilities) are met
at all times — including (and especially) during the global coronavirus pandemic.
CATCH recognizes the sizeable challenges that exist within our student population
during the current COVID-19 crisis, and the importance of implementing a distance
learning program that is robust, comprehensive, and responsive to the needs of all
children.

CATCH Prep teachers, including English Language Development (ELD) and special
education teachers, have worked together to create an entirely new Master Schedule —
one that is public-facing, clearly understood by students, parents, and our entire
stakeholder community, and one that offers students, both, the kinds of rigorous college
prep experiences they are accustomed to at CATCH Prep, as well as the flexibility to
support they myriad obligations and responsibilities that come with managing a global
pandemic crisis in a community like the Crenshaw District.

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June 2020

We’re proud to say that we think we’ve achieved this balance at CATCH Prep, and our
new DAILY TEACHING SCHEDULE is posted on our Learning Academy website for
anyone to access and explore at any time should they need to find a particular teaching
session.

Paired with the DAILY TEACHING SCHEDULE teachers co-created a DISTANCE
LEARNING CHECKLIST to inform students and parents of the FREE tools and
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June 2020

resources that would be needed in order to maximize learning in our new digital service
deliver model. It’s been quite a boon:

Every teacher also has a dedicated ONLINE LEARNING ACADEMY Teacher Page in
which their Virtual Office Hours are posted, Google Classroom codes are accessible
and clickable, and where various supplemental resources are housed for students and
parents to access at any time.

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June 2020

These pages have been important as students are being asked to quickly adapt and
remember so many new learning protocols and website addresses and online functions
that were simply not needed in the face-to-face era of instruction. What CATCH Prep
teachers have reported is that in the first week of our Distance Learning efforts (March
16, 2020 – March 20, 2020) much of their time was spent navigating the new Online
Learning Academy for students and parents: showing them how to access instructional
teacher sessions via GOOGLE MEET, explaining helpful tips like “screen-sharing” and
“raising your hand” via chat, and familiarizing students with the frequency and output
expectations teachers would continue to push for in our efforts to prepare 100% of
every graduating class for access to the nation’s wide array of prestigious colleges and
4-Year Universities.

Once inside a particular GOOGLE CLASSROOM environment, students have an
organized place to access assignments, keep track of their learning, and monitor their
own progress towards completion of their learning goals. In the STREAM portion of
every GOOGLE CLASSROOM in CATCH’s Online Academy, teachers post the content
that was delivered during the day’s instruction for students to re-access it at a later time,
share it with their parents, or catch up any learning they may have missed. Finally, the
posting of new content and resources for students to continue moving their learning
forward is complemented by daily instructional opportunities via GOOGLE MEET, where
students all log on to specific, closed, and safe online environment with their teacher
and receive direct instruction and participate in classroom discourse.

3. Provide a description of the steps that have been taken by the LEA to continue
delivering high-quality distance learning opportunities.

Since March 13, 2020 (the last day the CATCH Prep Campus was open for the 19-20
school year), all 171 of enrolled CATCH students (100%) have logged on to attend live
instructional classes offered through CATCH’s Online Learning Academy a total of
4,242 separate times. This has resulted in a total of 96,801 minutes of instruction being
experienced by the totality of the CATCH Prep student body. In addition, 100,091
student interactions with documents, quizzes, projects, and presentations have

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June 2020

occurred since CATCH closed its physical doors on March 13, 2020. And as the weeks
have passed, the student participation and document interaction frequency has
continued to climb — to the point where we anticipate breaking the 95% daily
participation rate by the end of April.

The story behind this data has much to do with the culture of professionalism and
collaborative nature of the CATCH Prep faculty. Our school was able to invent and
execute an Online Learning Academy in a matter of days as we knew student learning
opportunities would have to radically evolve in the age of global pandemic.

To do this, teachers and administrators met during the week of March 9, 2020 on the
CATCH campus every day during lunch and after school to begin planning the
framework for a distance learning experience that would occur daily and be offered to
students from their homes. We called it the CATCH Prep Online Learning Academy,
and      we       built    a     viable    framework   on   our   website    accessible   at
https://www.catchhighschool.com/onlinelearningacademy.

Since distance learning began on March 13, 2020, CATCH has been able to track a
number of key data points that ensure students (and parents) are connected and
engaged with the daily academic, creative, and social-emotional learning offerings
provided by the teachers and staff of CATCH Prep. This data has helped our school
target our efforts where they are most needed, as opposed to sending schoolwide
messages on the importance of connectivity, engagement, and participation that may
come as repetitive or unnecessary to many of CATCH Prep’s students and families.
Specifically, we look at three key factors of connectivity and engagement to inform our
outreach:
              •   The percentage of students who access live instructional
                  teaching opportunities via GOOGLE MEET daily.
              •   The amount of minutes students are online in live instructional
                  classrooms on the GOOGLE MEET platform daily.
              •   The number of assignments that are edited, worked on,
                  shared, and turned in via GOOGLE DOCS and GOOGLE

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June 2020

CLASSROOM weekly.

These raw data sets are shared with all teachers and staff daily as they inform our daily
calls home and outreach to families throughout the week. Teachers share the data, too,
to understand if a student may be participating in one learning setting but not another —
and then problem-solve on that issue of engagement through the sharing of relational
practices, rapport building, and instructional practice.

4. Provide a description of the steps that have been taken by the LEA to provide
school meals while maintaining social distancing practices.

CATCH Prep is co-located on the campus of Audubon Middle School, and in
partnership with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the California Charter
Schools Association, and Red Cross, CATCH Prep provides nutritious meals to all
students and families during school closure. The CATCH-AUDUBON Facility was
turned into a Grab & Go Food Center (one of 60 located throughout the city of Los
Angeles) on Wednesday, March 18 and continues to be staffed for daily food
distribution from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m., Monday through Friday. Each CATCH student is
able to take home two nutritious meals with no registration required. Information
provided to CATCH Prep students and families regarding food services and meal
distribution is available at https://www.catchhighschool.com/free-meals.

As the county has partnered with LAUSD and CATCH to design and support this food
distribution program, all staff members adhered to LA County Health Department
Guidelines in regards to strict social distancing of 6 feet or more and the use of gloves
and masks at all times, as well as frequent hand washing.        Furthermore, the food
distribution pick-up protocol is by drive-up so as to minimize human-to-human contact
and limit exposure to the coronavirus.

5. Provide a description of the steps that have been taken by the LEA to arrange
for supervision of students during ordinary school hours.

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June 2020

CATCH understands that the lack of supervision of students during unexpected and
prolonged school closures has a major economic and productivity impact on working
families. Specifically for CATCH, school closures create an even greater negative
impact since many of our parents and caregivers hold jobs in the healthcare and other
critical fields and depend on school time for their children’s supervision.

Since the closure of school on March 13, 2020, CATCH has collaborated with LAUSD,
the Labor and Workforce Development Agency and the California Health and Human
Services Agency to jointly develop and provide information that support CATCH families
on how to care for their children during ordinary school hours and school closure. After
gathering sufficient information and resources for our families, CATCH created a
COVID-19 Resource Page located at https://www.catchhighschool.com/coronavirus for
parents and caregivers to easily access directly from our school webpage. This page
serves as a resource hub for families to gain information and guidance on available
programs, local offices, and community agencies that remain open and provide
essential services – such as critical pop-up childcare programs for working families. In
the event that parents or caregivers are unable to navigate the webpage, or need any
additional assistance, the CATCH school administration is readily available to assist and
provide the necessary help to ensure the needs of families are met.

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June 2020