When Ventura County schools start welcoming students back to class, it’s not going to be business as usual. Find out what students can expect when campuses reopen.

The Rio School District in Oxnard is going the extra mile to make distance learning work for all of its students – many of whom are facing extra challenges during the pandemic. Nearly seventy percent of the students in this K-8 district are socioeconomically disadvantaged and about half are learning to be proficient in English. Before the school year began, the district made sure every student had a computer and access to the internet. “We hunted down Wi-Fi hot spots until the c...

It’s almost time for class to begin at Triton Academy, a VCOE school in Camarillo that serves students with autism. Teacher Denise Pannell is seated at her computer in a sparkling classroom in the recently completed building that is Triton’s new home, but there are no students to be seen. They’ll all be joining the class from home via Zoom.The students’ faces soon fill Pannell’s screen, and they respond enthusiastically when she asks them questions. She has a large ...

Engaging. Interactive. Encouraging. These are some of the words that students at Oak Park High School use to describe their experience with distance learning in Winnie Sloan’s 10th grade biology class. “I really like how you encourage us to be a better version of ourselves and work hard,” one student wrote in a survey Sloan sent to take the pulse of her class.In her 32 years of teaching, Sloan has made a point of staying on the cutting edge of educational technology. She also m...

When the coronavirus pandemic threatened to sideline Ventura County’s most popular academic competitions, John Tarkany knew it was time to get creative. “We typically have hundreds of students and judges co-mingling and that’s just not possible right now,” says Tarkany who coordinates student competitions for the Ventura County Office of Education. So Tarkany and his counterparts across the state began looking for ways to hold student competitions virtually. For the ...