Except for a couple sites, school in California have been pretty much shut down since March 13 when Governor Newsom signed an Executive Order authorizing schools to be paid for average daily attendance even if they are closed for COVID. In fact I was at the Capitol the day he signed it. Once word went out that he was going to issue that my iPhone was blowing up with notifications of school districts closing. Most schools in California have already announced they will be closed for the rest of the year.
I did manage to contact one of the Story Map team members from Rutter Middle School in Sacramento who got one of the other students to help in out to continue with his project. I submitted that project on Sunday. It looks really good. In my judgement it is the best submission from Rutter yet. There was another good project completed as the final in the Web Mapping Mini Course that we decided to build on it for the competition. She got as far as transferring her web maps from the public account to the school organizational account before schools closed, but she did not get in contact with me with sufficient time before the submission deadline to put something together. I hope she will be willing to pick it up when we come back in the fall. Hers is also a winner.
I also sat in on a couple of the Google Meets sessions with the Environmental Science class at Channel Islands High School. We did have a couple students there interested in a Story Map competition, but that did not move forward. David Haynes, the teacher there I work with was thinking about having them do a story map project on an environmental topic. I do not know if that is moving forward. Since the kids grades can not be lowered from when school was closed, the students are not very motivated to do anything.
I am looking at what can be done for next year. This situation has exposed the deficiencies of California K12 when it comes to digital and technology literacy by both students and teachers. I have had some email strings with a couple of my legislative contacts to revisit some of my previous reform proposal that got push back from the establishment. Those ideas are getting a bit more traction than in the past. It is going to be a major challenge for schools to open with the criteria being set by Governor Newsom. A couple of District Superintendents have already stated in media that they can not reopen under those circumstances.
One of the things I am looking at is if the students I have trained in WebGIS and have excellent skills could be an asset to the County Health Department in Contact Tracing.
Marc Epstein
Sacramento