CCSD tightens requirements for reporting student contacts

New guidance from the Clark County School District seeks to standardize the way teachers make contact with students during school closures after reporting by the Review-Journal last week called into question the district’s efforts to track the information.

Students must be contacted once per week by a licensed teacher during school closures, according to the Nevada Department of Education, and those who can’t be reached for a week are to be marked absent.

The Review-Journal reported last week that CCSD appeared to be out of compliance with this directive after the district could not produce the number of students contacted despite multiple requests from the newspaper.

CCSD later reported that 257,486 students — or about 79 percent of the district’s 325,081 — were contacted by their teachers during the first week of distance learning, leaving about 21 percent who were not. The district did not provide the numbers for the second week of distance learning.

A CCSD memo dated April 9 states that teachers must now log two-way communication in the platform known as Infinite Campus to take attendance during distance education. A new option will appear in the contact log to indicate whether the contact made with a student or their parents and guardians through email, texts or phone calls was answered.

Two-way communication can also be logged by demonstrating that a student has made progress in learning activities given by the teacher. And a separate option allows teachers to log “documented exemptions” of students who do not have access to a device or an internet connection and cannot leave home to pick up a hard-copy learning packet.

The memo also encourages teachers to go back and change or create attendance entries for students dating back to the first week of school closures on March 16.

“As announced on March 20, 2020 and clarified in additional communication on March 23, 2020, teachers and other licensed professionals are required to utilize the Teacher Contact Log in Infinite Campus to take attendance during distance education,” the memo said.

Teachers say they had previously logged all attempted contacts, whether through emails generated by an assignment management system, or by phone calls and messages, adding notes about which students could not be reached. The option to indicate that communication was two-way is new, they said.

The district said last week that teachers had made 678,324 contacts over the first two weeks of distance learning, but provided no details about the number of students reached the second week.

In an emailed statement regarding the new communication directive, representatives said CCSD received “additional clarification provided regarding the definition of contacting students and how contacts with students should be counted,” and communicated it to teachers and principals.

“As CCSD worked with the Nevada Department of Education (NDE) to define the processes and develop plans, there has been additional clarification provided regarding the definition of contacting students and how contacts with students should be counted,” the statement said.

A message from the district sent to parents on Monday also said families should expect to hear from teachers at least once per week.

“We ask that our students and parents check their email and phone messages regularly and respond to educators as soon as possible,” the statement said. “You can also help teachers be more efficient by verifying contact information is updated in Infinite Campus.”

Contact Aleksandra Appleton at 702-383-0218 or aappleton@reviewjournal.com. Follow @aleksappleton on Twitter.