 Hi my name is Christina Ismail. I'm the senior project manager on our education policy program and I am joined today by Carla Diaz. Hi Carla, how are you? Hi, I'm good. How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and broken-air public schools which is what we're here to talk about? Absolutely. So I'm the associate superintendent over instruction that means I oversee pretty much anything that happens in our pre-k through 12th grade schools, Republic School District in Oklahoma. We're in the suburbs. We have a little over 19,800 students or stand-alone pre-k centers, 15 elementaries which are K through five and five male schools, a ninth grade center and then we have the largest high school in the state of Oklahoma. Really? As well as an alternative academy and a virtual academy. Okay, so that's over 1,200 kids a year. So that high school that I got to visit a couple of years ago was that high school? Okay. How are you doing as a district leader in such an unprecedented time and during a pandemic? Well, that's a great question. It varies day to day. It's a little bit of a roller coaster. It started out completely overwhelming. We spent about two weeks at the initial onset when we came into Safe Shelter preparing curriculum. We shut down all the schools under the state superintendent's order and our instructional team and different leaders spent two weeks just planning distance learning for all the students, reviewed all the devices that we had in the district, got feedback from parents on internet and Wi-Fi availability and we dove into setting up the curriculum. So the weeks were overwhelming. Then it kind of got smooth for a little while, seemed like we were getting in the rhythm, but now it's also overwhelming again as we look to the upcoming school year. Yeah, oh absolutely. What have been some of the biggest challenges that you might have faced as a district or even personally? Well, our most biggest priority at first was just feeding kids, making sure kids had basic needs met. Absolutely. So that was the biggest thing and then once we got that, I think biggest hurdle has just been inequities of families. How do we help the families that don't have Wi-Fi or even if they do, one thing we've learned is families have several kids at home. Parents are stretched pretty thin helping them and supporting them. Or they may have pulled us to have a device, but that was one device for several kids. They really don't have enough. So I think that's our biggest area. So I've had the chance to visit your school as well as work with the district over the past several years on your work with open educational resources. When the district made the quick transition to the distance learning back in March, how did you all approach this? You had mentioned like the devices and the connectivity, but what did that process look like and how did you prioritize access for every student? Well, we are lucky because I think, as I said, we're a one-to-one device district for sixth grade through 12th grade. Part of the reason we did that was because of the OERs. We just learning online and it's constantly developing. It's a natural way for students to learn. So that actually made the secondary somewhat simpler. We started more than we were not one-to-one. We do have an exchange amongst our schools. Some of our schools have a lot of Chromebooks. Some don't have as many. And so that was one of the biggest areas that we really had to focus on. That was a big challenge. But we addressed it just our principles, our building principles are amazing. So they made lots of phone calls. We tried to point and then we offered devices for families that also had internet access. Another thing we ran into was teachers that don't have Wi-Fi at home. Just assume they all do, but we have some who live out in really remote areas, they either don't have access to it or some who that's not part of their budget. So for those, they provide hotspots. Okay. Wow. I heard a story from one of your district leaders about working with the Walmart in your area and kind of leveraging business partners in all of the work that you did. Can you tell us a little bit more about this? Absolutely. This was a huge win and I just kind of came through a brainstorming session with my instructional one of the things we did for the kids who didn't have devices or maybe our parents preferred a tangible hands-on activity. It packets for pre-K through 12th grade. By 6th grade through 12th grade we did it by subject area and content. Okay, okay. Pre-K through 5th, we did it grade level and subject. And so we were like, how are we going to get those packets? And without, we really didn't want a lot of people on the streets. It was, you know, safe at home. Oh, yeah. We reached out to our local Walmart, who are amazing. They're super supportive of the schools and just asked if we could do kind of the kiosks that they do before school starts with school supply lists and information. They were awesome. So every Thursday, my awesome office team would go run the packets and deliver them. We had three different super wallmarks and destroy them. And then we learned through some mistakes that you want to hear about. Yes, of course. Always want to hear the lesson playing. So, I think you learned. Well, one thing was a great idea. It wasn't mine, but you know the little Scantron codes, you know, the QR codes. Yeah. So that was one thing we did. We did put QR codes on the kiosks and they could use that. Parents could use those and that would notify my office if we were out of packets. Brilliant. That was a good lesson. But then one mistake we learned was we ran what we thought they would need. So the shortage of devices is how many we ran. Well, what we found was families, even if they had devices, they wanted the hard copies for whatever reason. They made them more comfortable or, you know, they only had one device at home or maybe mom didn't want the kid in front of the computer all day. So they, I mean, we were running up to Walmart every day, which defeats the purpose. Yeah, a little bit. So after the first week, what we decided to do was we would also email the PDFs to the families. So we just said, hey, if you kind of printed at home, you can. That solved it. Then we were literally just having the families that actually needed them come out because they didn't know how to do it from home without the PDF and we were just getting online, trying to figure it out with the links, the live links. So once we gave them those printable copies, it solved the problem. And once in a while, we'd have to run back up and replenish, but for the most part, we didn't. So it was really good. Amazing. We had businesses like pop up from all over the place that wanted to support us. So if we have to go through this again, I feel like we'll be more intentional on how we ask for help and get help. Sure, absolutely. Such a great business partnership to leverage there. I know that I have mentioned this specific example to others and to other school districts to consider. And they have kind of run with it. Maybe it was a grocery store that they have a business partnership, even my former district in Omaha, Nebraska, they have a local grocery store that is just down the street from my last elementary school building. And they were like, Oh, we can do that. So yeah, this is such a great idea. And I'm so excited that we get to share this story with others. Yeah. And it's an essential business. So we knew they'd be open and they were happy to have and mom or dad could go get groceries and then go get the kids packet and just be out one time. So it was good. It was a win-win. That's great. That is great. Do you have any other advice or information that you'd want other district leaders, policymakers, or even just general educators to know right now? I think my biggest thing is don't be afraid to ask for help and be flexible and understanding with parents. And my own granddaughter here a couple of times, my daughter is an essential worker. She's a physical therapist. And so a couple of times, I've had her here with me and I will reflect and go, wow, it must be really hard on our teachers to be teaching right now and have their own children at home. So I think it's really important to keep those different perspectives. We caught our own little bubble and think, well, they can do that. And I think we touch on each other a lot of grace and those parents who are working who are also trying to teach their kids. I think it's really important for us as educators to be flexible, be flexible with the time limits and think about those assignments as we give them. How can we provide support for the learning that doesn't require parents to have to do it because either don't have the time or they aren't able or they're just stretch really thin and they're just trying to get by right now. So I think this might be absolutely. Yeah, I really appreciate that. I appreciate the focus on kind of people's well-being and wellness right now. That is something that I'm hearing a lot or the original social media kind of tweet that came out about here's our at home schedule and here's how we're going to do this. And then everyone's like, we're going to take a step back. We're going to deal with what we can deal with. And so, yes, a lot of grace and flexibility is what I think is a theme for right now. So, well, Carla, I really appreciate you sharing the story of the work that's been happening in Broken Arrow. And I wish you safety and healthiness and hopefully, hopefully a new 2020-21 school year that is a little different. I hope so too. Thank you. And we appreciate all your support as well. Oh, great. Thank you.