July 15, 2020
By: Dwayne Page
The DeKalb County School District is offering a “Parent Digital University” for those with children in the school system.
Parents are urged to view the videos below (available in English and Spanish) to better educate themselves on the use of the digital educational platform being offered by the school district in preparation for remote learning from home .The videos will equip you with the tools necessary to help make your child successful in the DeKalb County School System.
(Video below in English)
(Video below in Spanish)
Although plans are for a traditional reopening of DeKalb County schools with students attending on campus August 3 parents may opt for remote learning from home for their children. Parents are asked to contact their child’s school weekdays from 9 a.m. until 2 p.m. prior to July 22 if they want their child to participate in remote learning.
Unlike this past school year, the school district will use the same digital platform for all grade levels and parents should be prepared to understand how to make use of it and to practice its operation with their children.
Director Patrick Cripps has announced that all DeKalb County students in grades K-12 (almost 3,000) will be provided a chromebook (computer) for the 2020-2021 academic school year for use in the classrooms and at home.
“Every student in the school system will get a 1:1 device (computer) to take home. We will expect our teachers to not only communicate with our parents digitally but be prepared to assign lessons through the Edgenuity platform,” said Cripps.
Providing all students in kindergarten to 12th grade a Chromebook is new. High school students were the first to be assigned chromebooks three years ago for use at school and home. A year later 6th to 8th graders were provided chrome books and this past year 3rd to 5th graders got 1:1 devices although they (elementary and middle school students) could not take them home.
Chromebooks are returned at the end of each school year but students are reassigned the same devices the following year. High school seniors return their devices upon graduation and those are either replaced or recycled back into the system for other students to use.
WJLE will be hosting a LIVE Call-In program Thursday morning, July 16 starting at 8:30 a.m. featuring Director of Schools Patrick Cripps and Attendance Supervisor Joey Reeder to discuss the plans for re-opening DeKalb County Schools on Monday, August 3.
Listeners may phone in their questions to Cripps and Reeder at 615-597-4265. The program will be broadcast LIVE on WJLE AM 1480/WJLE FM 101.7 and LIVE stream at www.wjle.com.