The Hypothesis

Go behind the scenes of a PreK - 8th grade charter school in Santa Fe, New Mexico making decisions around whether to open school for in-person learning and how to do so amid a global pandemic. Set at Turquoise Trail Charter School, the state's oldest and fourth largest charter school, you'll meet teachers and administrators who are grappling with how to walk the fine line between public health and public policy during an historic moment in time. As a charter school, Turquoise Trail is able to make decisions both as a school and as a district and is directly accountable. Given that the school serves students across a wide range of ages, the tradeoffs and unintended consequences of decision making is even more complex. Younger students are more directly in need of in-person learning, given that they learn more through socialization, so the drive to get them in school sooner is urgent. Amid the complexity of site-based decision making in this context, the State of New Mexico's Public Education Department continues to issue guidelines that sometimes alter school opening timelines entirely. Along side the story of this school, topics such as the politics and sociology of schools will be explored in this context.

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The Hypothesis

The Math of a Classroom

October 13, 2020 • Protect the Pack Productions • Season 1 • Episode 4

The art and science of keeping students and teachers as safe as possible is a mindset that extends to every nook and cranny of a school and its operations. In this episode, we focus on the classroom, the hallways that connect the classrooms, and the school building itself.

Consider the question of how many students may safely fit in any classroom in our current context. Is it enough to divide the total square footage by 28.26 (the area of a circle, 6 ft. in diameter)? Not even close.

In this episode, we go into the complexity of that question. How do you consider the impact of furniture, pedagogy, the movement of students in a room given their age and grade not just on the final calculation of how many students can fit in a room, but in a hallway? A school?

We introduce the notion of a "pod" to address the issue of humans interacting with one another above the constraints of space in a school. You will meet Peter Nguyen, our Facilities Manager, and again from Danielle Garcia, our Director of Operations, who did the math and economics to solve these problems for our school building.

The Hypothesis is the ongoing story of a school with the ability to decide whether or not to open amid this global pandemic, and if so, how. Short episodes released every Tuesday. Brought to you by Protect the Pack Productions at Turquoise Trail Charter School, Santa Fe, New Mexico.