CSDNB begins Continued Educational Opportunities (CEO)

The safety of our staff and families remains our number one priority in New Britain. We urge all members of our community to continue to follow guidelines from The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and encourage all to stay home and stay healthy.

(New Britain CT) - Monday, March 30, 2020 marked the beginning of phase two of learning during the extended school closure in the Consolidated School District of New Britain. We are calling this phase ‘Continued Educational Opportunities (CEO)’ for all New Britain students. During CEO, Google Classroom will be the primary vehicle for classroom instruction. Students will access assignments and tasks posted by their classroom teacher(s) through their Google Classroom(s). Questions about posted assignments should be directed to classroom teachers.

The Daily Activities for your Brain (DAB) website will remain active and available during CEO and can be used to support and supplement student work with their teachers in Google Classroom. Additionally, on or before Monday, April 6th, a weekly overview of plans will be available on the School Pages section on the CSDNB DAB website.

Google Classroom is a new learning platform for the majority of our students and staff. A total of 2,506 Google Classrooms have been created for CEO, including 1,812 since schools initially closed on March 13. How-to videos for families were created in English, Spanish, and Arabic to support families in navigating the platform. These videos, in addition to instructions on how to access PowerSchool, student G-Mail, and other applications, are available on the How-to page on the CSDNB DAB website.

CSDNB conducted multiple phone and online surveys to determine how many families are in need of a device at home. In response to all the surveys, last week, CSDNB staff contacted families directly to pick up a district Chromebook. CSDNB was able to provide approximately 2,000 devices to households without a device. We recognize that many families are sharing devices in their homes and that this can be particularly difficult for a family that has multiple children or adults working from home. To better support these families, CSDNB prepared directions for how to utilize an Apple TV, Playstation, or Xbox to access Google Classroom. For additional technical help, families can email parenthelp@csdnb.org.

In addition to the academic and technological support, CSDNB has been committed to digitally engaging our students, families, and staff through virtual interactions on social media. Superintendent Sarra has shared multiple “Keeping you in the Loop” updates over the past few weeks and launched her “Monday Message” video campaign on March 30, 2020. While the communication of important information to families has been key, engagement through a virtual spirit week, virtual kindness week, and regular Love Wins evening readings with The Ana Grace Project have kept families and students connected to the CSDNB staff who miss them.

“We miss our students every day, but we are also excited to welcome them to online learning every day - a new way of learning for all of us,” said Nancy Sarra, Superintendent of Schools. “We will be checking daily who is attending their Google Classrooms because it is critically important that our students are engaged in continuous learning. I have confidence in the talent, motivation, and resiliency of the entire New Britain school community and take great comfort in knowing that we are in this together.”