The most challenging year Educators grade Marion’s schools during the pandemic BY BRAD ROGERS PHOTOGRAPHY BY RALPH DEMILIO
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here was no preparing for it. There was no easing into it. There was no guidebook with best practices to pull out and consult. No, when the Marion County Public Schools were ordered to shut down as the COVID-19 pandemic swept the nation in March 2020, it was immediate and was un-
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charted territory for the school system. That was evident in what school officials determined was the first order of business after shutting down. It was not how to get students their assignments, or even how classes would be conducted with school doors closed. No, the first thing that had to be figured out was how to get meals to
the approximately two-thirds of the county’s public school students who every day rely on free and reduced-price lunches for basic nutrition. It was the first of many changes in the way we operate our schools that would significantly alter the lives of students, teachers, parents, indeed the entire community, over
