 Hi everybody, welcome back to our Daily Facebook Live. I hope you're home and that you're staying in and staying healthy. And that if you've got children at home with you, that you're enjoying those kids, reading to them, spending a little time. Don't let them make you pull your hair out. I raised three kids and six grandkids and I know how that can happen. I'm joined today with a very special guest, Dr. Kent Scribner, 4th ISD Superintendent. Kent, welcome. Great to be here. Thank you, ma'am. Glad to have you. But before we start with some questions for Kent, I want to update you with a little bit of information like we do every day about the COVID virus, COVID-19. Unfortunately, Fort Worth lost another resident last night. These are really tough times for us and to have to announce those deaths is really hard. Our thoughts and our prayers go out to their family and their loved ones and then to each and every one of you. Today, Fort Worth has had more than a dozen new cases. That's 115 cases so far and two deaths. But we have had a good many recoveries too and that's a good thing. So I'm truly saddened by this loss and it is the harsh reality of the situation with this pandemic. And I'm afraid the news may not get any easier but if we all do our part, we will get through this and we will get businesses back open and ultimately get these kids back in school. So stay home, follow good hygiene and let's do our part to help move through this time. Our community will unite and come together. Kent, you've been here five years now and you know this community well. Absolutely. So I know I'll start in right in with a couple of questions for you. I know this is a really difficult time for you and that you've had to make really hard determinations. Your first thought is always on our students and how it affects their learning, their families, their teachers and their time. So you can tell us a little bit about what you've had to do. Sure, absolutely. Thank you, Mayor. And thanks for this opportunity. This has been a very difficult time for students, challenging for families, challenging for teachers and all of our school leaders. When you think about it overwhelmingly, our 5,600 teachers, the majority of them are first year teachers again because they've never done this, full time online instruction. In fact, when we came back, would have come back for spring break and the announcement was made that we would continue our school closures. Our staff put together instructional resources for engagement to keep students thinking while we were in the midst of standing up our online instructional program. We like all major districts have a great infrastructure that we have to pivot from in classroom education to online. So school is in session. It's just in session online. In fact, this week was our first week, full online instruction, teacher guided, district wide learning at home on our learning at home website. That will continue throughout the semester and we're getting better at it. We need to be patient with our students. We need to be patient with our families. We need to be patient with our teachers because this is new for everyone. So what does that really look like? And don't you wish you'd bought stock at Zoom? Absolutely. Well, I think all of us are learning how to work differently. The Zoom meetings, the Zoom classrooms. For us, it's been a bit of a challenge also because there is a digital divide in our school district. Many of our students we found either did not have a device at home or did not have robust dependable wifi or didn't have either. I think 4,000 of our students didn't have a computer at home. About 1,000 of them didn't have wifi and another 4,000 didn't have either. So our staff, our teachers, our support staff all worked together and this week alone, we deployed 7,000 items, 7,000 devices into the community. We're gonna continue on that route. In fact, we emptied out the computers that are in our schools, put them out into the community and thanks to the wonderful flow of the proper community that exists here in Fort Worth, we're gonna be able to backfill those devices. That's great to be able to put these electronics in the hand of kids, because I can't imagine. I do know that when I've been out in the community, not recently, but in the last year or so, I'm amazed in the afternoon that the number of kids who were at high school parking lots or junior high school parking lots doing their homework because they didn't have wifi at home. Sure, and what we found is in some communities, they'll take a school bus and park it in the parking lot and put hotspots on the school bus so students can do their work. Now what we really wanna do is distribute those hotspots to homes so kids can work safely in their homes. Very creative. And talking about hotspots, for you, if you're not, don't have a child at home and not getting in. Our Fort Worth library has hotspots you can check out. Well, that's a plus for families that might not have a child at home. So what about your teachers? How much has their work changed? Obviously it's changed a lot. Yeah, absolutely. Our teachers are phenomenal. They've risen to the challenge. As I said, many of them are doing this for the first time. Some of our teachers are actual experts at online instruction, so they're helping their colleagues. They have checklists of expectations for this week. They're all launching their virtual classrooms. They've been connecting with students, they've been connecting with students on the social and emotional perspective as well though. We asked our teachers while we were standing up our online process to reach out and ask, make phone calls or reach out on Google Classroom and ask our students how they're doing. Are they okay? Are they safe? What's going on in their home? Those kinds of things because this is a time where we're leading with lessons is less important than leading with love. This is difficult for everyone. We have to support our students. Our teachers also, many of them have been connecting with students not only on the telephone or via Google Classroom, but we've seen car parades through the neighborhoods where the principal or the lead teachers will organize a parade and the teachers will drive through the neighborhoods, honking their horns and waving. In fact, Sulak and I were out on a walk there in West Cliff and we saw that faculty and staff driving through and connecting with kids. And that means a lot to our students. It's amazing the creative things that people have done in this community to come together, not just to support our kids, but to support everybody. So the old question comes up always for parents, not so much from kids, but what are you gonna do about what we used to call report cards and now you tend to talk about grades and grading systems. So I'm on a phone call every afternoon with Commissioner Marath and we've talked a lot about this and virtually all of the large city school districts, the Big Eight, we are all moving toward pass, fail for grading because when you think about it, not every student's home environment is equal. Not every student has access to a device at the same time, perhaps in one household, every student may have a device, have a computer and in another household where they're sharing that computer. So we really wanted to level the playing field. We ask our teachers, pass, fail doesn't mean lower your standards. It's still an opportunity to give feedback, to give a lot of feedback, but we shouldn't be grading kids on the stability of their home. There's lots of stress, there may be illness, there's financial stress, not every student has a safe and orderly home life and we really wanna reach out and support those students to the extent possible. So moving forward, we will be assessing students on a pass, fail basis, but again, encouraging our teachers to provide them lots and lots of feedback. We wanna get through this time and get stronger so that we can have a meaningful summer school and get on to a successful 2021 school year. And don't you think this changes the future of learning for kids, not just learning but of teaching and maybe even grading? Absolutely, we always talk about in education that we want our students and our adults to be lifelong learners. Well, here's an opportunity where we need to pivot and become learners of new technologies, how we can do schooling differently, how we can do meetings differently, how we can really change the way education is presented in the 21st century. This is really a watershed moment, I believe. And there's no going back to the old way. I think this is an opportunity for us to learn and benefit and make the future even brighter. And I think schools are no exception, but I think most businesses are gonna find their functions substantially changed or at bare minimum, their delivery of services and schools will be right there. As we were talking about earlier, not every meeting needs to be an in-person meeting. Yeah, that's right. We were talking earlier and we said, our Zoom meetings are much more efficient than some of our in-person meetings. People want a short suite and get there. So one of the things that there's been a fair amount of coverage on, but you still might talk just a little bit about how it's being handled. So many of our kids, I think it's 88% have free and reduced lunch, which means they get their main meal at school. And I know you're delivering those to them, but would you tell our listeners and viewers just a little bit about how you're doing that and why it's so critically important? Yeah, that has been an enormous effort. We are fortunate that we are partnering with Sodexo who's doing a great job for us. So we have stood up 18 food distribution sites across the city. In addition to those 18 physical sites, we have four food trucks that can also supplement. We're looking at some specific areas in your larger apartment complexes that could also benefit from additional feeding. This week alone thus far, we've had 46,000 meals served and that's double the number because what we're doing we're feeding students, not only students, any individual 18 years or younger, irrespective of whether they qualify for free and reduced lunch or they go to Fort Worth ISD or not. Any individual who's 18 years or younger qualifies for a meal. And we're offering two meals in one. We're giving them today's lunch and tomorrow's breakfast every day between noon and 1.30 at those 18 sites and those 18 sites are listed on the Fort Worth ISD website. That's great. That's really been a successful thing. I'm always impressed with the functions of girls but you stood that up so quick and got it going and I, you know, in classic fashion, Sodexo stepped up and businesses have done so much to help us and to help you and everybody. So let's talk just a second about residents. We do have a lot of people who are tuned in who don't have kids in school. What would you say to them about how they can help students or teachers or you now and going forward? Well, Fort Worth is, as you said, I've been here now almost five years and my wife and I just love this community that really cares about its schools, cares about its students, has a heart for its children. And I think it's a great opportunity for those individuals who don't have children in school to reach out to their local school, reach out to their principal. We have opportunities for them to read, to their neighbor children, to read, to their grandchildren, really create a time during the day and have it perhaps even be scheduled where a student, a young person, can benefit from time of a caring adult. Virtually, of course, we want folks to stay at home, do it on the phone or do it on Zoom. But I think that's a great opportunity in the short term. Moving forward, we're looking forward to having a very robust summer school. We want to make up for this lost time. We were on upward trajectory this year and this is an unexpected curve ball that we didn't see. We were really excited about what we were going to do in terms of performance this year, but we want to make that time up this summer and we're going to be calling on all hands on deck for volunteers and support in our summer program moving to the 2021 school year. I just gotta say, y'all have done a great job and it is a difficult time for families and children, but it won't be lost. They'll pick up. Kids are amazingly adaptable and us as parents, we gotta be just as resilient and adaptive as they are. So thank you for being here today and thank you for the information. It's critical to our community. I would ask you to help me support the message with families to stay home. Absolutely. Don't gather. No, it's extremely important. The more serious we take this and stay at home, the quicker this will be over so we can get back to some sense of normalcy and what Fort Worth is really about. So I encourage every one of our Fort Worth ISD families and our entire community to take this seriously and y'all stay home. Thank you for your partnership. It's critical to the success of the story, the success of the city and everybody. So I'll always close these with y'all stay safe, you stay healthy and y'all stay home. Amen. Thank you, Kent. Thank you.