Following recent guidance from the Minnesota Department of Education, Owatonna High School will offer a hybrid credit recovery program this month for students who struggled during distance learning. Those needing to make up a lesser number of credits from this past semester will be able to work on an individual recovery program with both an online and in-person component. Meanwhile, the district’s traditional credit recovery program will also be offered online — much as it has in the past — for students with more to make up.

Owatonna High School is taking advantage of an opportunity to do in-person summer learning by offering a hybrid credit recovery program for students who struggled to get a passing grade during the last months of remote coursework.

In addition to its traditional summer school program, which is run through the Alternative Learning Center and will continue to be offered online, this second option will take place over the course of two weeks in June at Owatonna High School and will be for students who received a “no credit” grade this past semester when distance learning was in effect.

“It wouldn’t be for a student that maybe failed courses throughout the entire year, those students would still go to our typical credit recovery program,” said Michelle Krell, director of teaching and learning for the district. “Students who have one or two assignments that they need to get done would go ahead and participate in this new program, trying to get the credits that they might not have gained at the end of this quarter or semester.”

Kory Kath, principal at OHS, said staff knew many students struggled with distance learning either because of connectivity or needing more in-person interaction with their teachers. For the most part, he said the program is for ninth- through 11th-graders who need to get back on track for the rest of their high school career. However, he added that there could be a handful of seniors also needing to finish up work in June.

Enrollment in the new program will be finalized after end-of-year grades are hammered down Friday. Kath said staff will reach out to students and families next week to get them on board, adding that he hoped the program would serve between 40 and 60 teens.

“The typical case would be a student that had a passing grade coming out of third quarter and for some reason, either lack of connectivity or another reason, they weren’t able to get the work done during fourth quarter or during the pandemic,” added Superintendent Jeff Elstad.

Once the program starts up on June 15, Kath said educators will work with students on individualized recovery programs that can be completed within a two-week window. While teachers will be available to assist in-person Monday through Thursday until June 25, students won’t necessarily have to report each day and will do a combination of face-to-face and distance work. This hybrid model was approved by the Minnesota Department of Education last month.

According to a May 29 letter from Commissioner Mary Cathryn Ricker, “A school district or charter school may safely open its building for a hybrid model of in-school learning activities and distance learning for summer learning and extended school year services, should they choose to. Schools may also choose to continue summer learning through a distance learning model.”

For hybrid programming, the MDE recommended no more than six students and one teacher in a classroom, with a maximum of nine students and one instructor.

While the program at OHS will be a hybrid, the annual credit recovery program run through the ALC will take place completely online – much as it has in previous years. Principal Jim Kiefer estimated that this program serves around 100 students annually. While the majority of coursework has traditionally been completed online, in the past there has been a face-to-face component where students can come in and work with educators.

“The teachers are still available during the same time. Students will just have to ask questions via email or video call,” said Kiefer.

Krell added that the decision to keep the original credit recovery program completely online was made so that the district could move forward with planning, even while waiting on updated guidelines from the MDE. “We needed to move forward, we always do it in June, and when we started to plan this we didn’t have guidance,” she said, adding that planning for distance learning was a more sure bet than trying to bank on an in-person component earlier this spring.

Although the new program will be hosted at the high school, both credit recovery options are open to students in grades nine through 12 at OHS and the ALC.

“Our students have until Thursday or Friday to get all of their work in and then we’ll be able to determine which students at that point need to attend independent study at OHS, but the students for the credit recovery program have already been identified,” said Krell.

Elstad added that some students have been allowed to keep technology for summer school and, for those who may have already turned in devices, everyone will be allowed to check it back out if needed for credit recovery.

According to Krell, the traditional program will run five days a week from June 9 to 30, with teachers available online from 8 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. daily. The new program will run four days a week from June 15 to 25.

Going forward, Kath said this new initiative may be one the district continues even after distance learning ends, as a way to help students course correct more quickly during the year. “We hope that this would be a model we could implement after first and second semester next year,” he said.

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