SILVER CREEK — Questions from parents were answered during a recent Facebook live session by Silver Creek Central School officials, including Superintendent Todd Crandall and Elementary School Principal Sterling Stearns.

Crandall kicked off the live event with a question-and-answer session that included discussion on remote learning within the district. Elementary remote learning is one of the top three issues in the superintendent’s office currently.

“We want to listen purposefully to see what we can do to further address the concern areas,” Crandall said. “I can tell you since the beginning of the school year we have reallocated resources to try to address the concerns and problems that are brought to us. We have increased our professional development for the teachers that are teaching virtually and have given them more time to prepare curriculum.”

In addition to giving the teachers more opportunities to learn, Crandall reported that they will not give up until they “cross the barrier” and commit to listen, understand and try to address the concerns. They know that elementary virtual sessions have been the most challenging across the board with other schools as well.

At the end of the last school year, parents made it clear that it would be easier for them to work off of one learning platform.

Unfortunately, that has not been the case so far, as it is hard for teachers and administration to adjust to and use only one site for their classes.

A concern relating to this is the lack of use of Zoom, a popular site being used for virtual meetings and classes. Crandall explained that the licenses to use Zoom cost a lot, and during a budget crisis, it is not in the district’s best interest to use funds on it.

Instead, they have moved to Teams, another virtual meeting website.

Crandall also addressed claims that the district is pushing remote learners to be in-person.

“That is not the truth,” he said. “That has never crossed my mind since we’ve started this school year, and you can see Mr. Stearns feels the same way. It has never been a conversation; it’s never been our intent, we don’t desire that, and we quite frankly felt that there would be more difficulties with the in-person learning model than we would have with virtual learning. … There is no desire and no plot to try to push people to go from virtual to in-person learning.”

Possibly the biggest and most common concern with parents in all grade levels seems to be the question of whether the in-person students and remote learners are still at the same pace and on the same level with each other.

“Our virtual teachers are working with in-person students as well to look at that scope and sequence and make sure their students are meeting the same milestones,” Stearns said. “I can’t tell you that they’re all at the same level, but I can tell you that I do believe in all of our teachers and that they’ll be able to get all our students to achieve. It’s important to understand that this work, scope and pace is something that, as a district, we are focusing on because of the large gap that we had over closure.”

Other concerns, for example, in-person teachers not being involved with online students and the school not allocating more teachers to be remote teachers, were addressed in the video — which can be found on the Silver Creek Central School District Facebook page.

Several questions from parents were about the return of some remote students to in-person learning in January. Stearns and Crandall both said that teachers will continue to plan extensively how the shift will impact the classes.

“This is a very unique time in education, so those challenges for our teachers and professionals is great,” Stearns said. “But I do believe that they are up for that challenge and believe that they have the skills and experiences to do that with everybody’s support.”