Schools assess pandemic year performance

The most challenging year

Educators grade Marion’s schools during the pandemic

BY BRAD ROGERS PHOTOGRAPHY BY RALPH DEMILIO

There 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 uncharted 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

the ensuing 14 months.

“I’ve been in education for 30 years, and this was by far the most challenging year I’ve been associated with, by far,” Deputy Superintendent of Schools Mark Vianello said.

“This has not been an easy year, but if we can get through this pandemic, we can get through anything.”

Get through this pandemic. For many, that is an apt description of what the school year was. Just get through it. The fallout of a school year defined by disruption in a multiplicity of ways is still being measured. And the impact of those disruptions remains undetermined in their gravity.

“I don’t think the full impact of the pandemic has been fully felt,” said Dr. Diane Gullett, Marion County’s first-year superintendent of schools who walked onto the job just one month before the start of the 202021 academic year.

LESSONS BEYOND THE 3 R’S For all the changes and challenges, Gullett and Vianello believe that the 2020-21 school year should be chalked up as a success in more ways than not. Oh, there were problems with remote learning. Teachers, bus drivers and custodial staff were asked to do more, a lot more. There were insufficient computers for students to take classes remotely at first. And, of course, there were health and safety protocols that were required in a setting and among a population – children – that were next to impossible to consistently enforce. Even the terminology of “going to school” changed to “brick and mortar school,” Gullett noted.

“I am very pleased with the work we did this year,” the superintendent said. “We did

‘I’ve been in education for 30 years, and this was by far the most challenging year I’ve been associated with, by far.”

—Deputy Superintendent of Schools Mark Vianello

‘I don’t think the full impact of the pandemic has been fully felt.’

—Superintendent of Schools Dr. Diane Gullett

not let the pandemic define us.”

But it did define the school year.

At the start of the year, for instance, one-third of Marion County students opted to take classes remotely from home. By the end of the year, only about 10 percent were still attending school from home, a clear indication that more than the 3 R’s were learned over the school year.

“For most students, we found that they are more successful in person,” Gullett said.

The dramatic change in the way our schools operated, however, led to new and perplexing problems. Human problems. Teachers were frazzled. Parents were stressed about having to be part-time teachers. Students, we all found out, struggled with the isolation of the lockdown, emotionally and academically.

“It was not a one-stress-induced event,” said Yvette del Nodal, the school district’s lead psychologist. “We’ve had a long, prolonged period of extended stress, and a lot of kids lacked coping strategies.”

“We did see a lot of kids disengage,” she added. “And it’s hard to get a kid to re-engage when they’ve been separated.”

Yet, for all of the problems -- the 1,700 positive COVID-19 tests among students and teachers, the 12,375 students and employees placed in quarantine, the burden of trying to maintain social distancing and mask-wearing day in and day out, complications caused by some remote-learning students not having internet access and the fast and furious move to new technologies like Zoom and Microsoft Teams — Gullett and Vianello see the year as being more of a success than what many have described as “a lost year.”

“All of our mitigation policies – and they were substantial – all of those things that we did worked,” Vianello said. “They paid off. We didn’t shut down one campus, one department. We stayed open. We can’t afford to lose a year.”

For Gullett, the year reaffirmed some basic, fundamental truths about public schools. Namely, that students come first.

“The focus has always been on what can we do for the students,” she said. “We are a safe haven for all students. We’re a place

‘For most students, we found that they are more successful in person.’

—Superintendent of Schools Dr. Diane Gullett

where they are fed, loved and taught.”

Gullett’s introduction to the school district’s 6,000-plus employees — from teachers and bus drivers to cafeteria workers and custodians — was to see them perform under fire. And she is impressed.

“I think they did a phenomenal job,” she said. “They were welcoming to the students, despite all the fears and unknowns. They adapted to students learning online.

“I think educators step up every time. I think people in the outside world were surprised (by how educators responded to the pandemic’s challenges). But educators care about what’s best for the children.”

Nonetheless, Gullett concedes just how the pandemic year will affect Marion County children remains to be seen.

There were, for example, mental health concerns on a wide scale among both teachers and students, showing the need for better services in that realm.

“The pandemic magnified that need for both students and employees,” said Gullett, adding that the district has hired more psychologists, social workers and family liaisons.

Online learning, which is nothing new to the district but had never been offered on the scale it was during the pandemic, also proved to be both a challenge and a learning experience. Gullett called it a “real problem” that so many students lack basic technology, or more often just mere access to internet service because of their rural residences. As a result, she said, the district has to figure out “how do we reach every child where they are.”

While children are “digital natives,” as Gullett put it, there is a big difference between socializing online and learning online.

“Yes, we can teach differently, and students can learn differently, but we want students to thrive, and too many are not thriving with online learning,” she said.

THE TEACHERS’ VIEW While the administration is hailing the school year as a relative success, the leader of the Marion Education Association, the local teachers’ union, has a different take on the pandemic school year.

MEA President Mark Avery said for all its praise for the district’s teachers, he believes the administration was more concerned with academic results than protecting teachers.

For example, all one had to do to see that social distancing was little more than a suggestion was to look in most Marion County classrooms, because “the School Board said there couldn’t be spread among kids.” In addition, teachers were required to clean classrooms after every class, plus serve and clean up students’ lunches. And when students were placed in quarantine because they had had contact with an infected person, he said, they were only quarantined with no requirement they be tested.

“The safety of the teachers was not a priority,” Avery said. “Our district expected our teachers to teach as if COVID wasn’t here. And that wasn’t realistic.”

While Avery concedes the school year ended up better than many expected, and the district managed to keep any large outbreaks out of the schools, he also believes that teachers now are being punished rather than

rewarded. Specifically, while students’ state test scores will not count this year, teachers are being evaluated on those same test scores, which affects their pay and teacher rating.

“They might know about curriculum and setting up classes, but they don’t know much about managing people,” Avery said of the administration.

“It was a very difficult year. They asked teachers to do their jobs and a whole lot of other stuff. And, oh by the way, keep yourself safe. So, teachers had all that constant stress. It definitely was a rough year for teachers.” del Nodal, the lead psychologist, agreed that the year was an exceptionally tough one for teachers.

“I think the stress came and went and got to everybody,” she said. “It felt overwhelming. What do we tackle first?” del Nodal said she was “excited” that, regarding mental health services, the district was “finally living it, worrying about students’ and teachers’ needs,” yet she also saw a lot of frustration among teachers throughout the year.

Avery said some of that frustration is because the school district refuses to fairly compensate teachers, even in a pandemic year. During 2020-21, the MEA and the school district went to impasse during contract negotiations over a $700,000 difference -- in a district with a $650 million budget. The district never acquiesced.

Now, he said, with schools ready to reopen Aug. 10, he is worried about teacher safety once again as the COVID virus is resurging across the country and the county.

“They’re going back to 100 percent capacity at sporting events,” he said. “But what I really found ironic is they sat there and said masks are optional in schools.”

While Vianello and Gullett say the pandemic has had little effect on teacher stability, Avery strongly disagrees.

“They’re lying,” he said.

Avery said teachers began leaving in large numbers right after the school year started. He said at the end of October 2020, the number of people leaving teaching in Marion County was up 52 percent over a year earlier. “And that was just the first three months,” he added.

School district officials show that 258 teachers resigned during the school year and another 82 retired, numbers Vianello said are typical.

Nonetheless, Avery said for all the high praise coming out of the district for teachers, the reality is that after a year of high stress and high risk for those on the front lines of public education in Marion County, they did not get better pay, better benefits or better working conditions as a reward.

“You can’t put thanks in the bank,” Avery said.

‘BUT WE DID IT’ With the schools ready to reopen next week, Vianello said one of the benefits of having gone through the pandemic is the Marion County Public Schools are prepared for another wave, should the pandemic come back with force.

Gullett, meanwhile, said the relationships that were built among teachers and other school district employees and between the school system and the community are invaluable.

“Partnerships, it’s all about partnerships,” she said.

The immediate work that lies ahead is figuring out how to manage online learning so the students most suited for it can access it and those unsuited for it are back in our schools.

Missing students also remain a problem. After the pandemic arrived, the school system reported 1,500 “missing” students, students who did not report to school and could not be located. They most likely moved elsewhere. But the loss of enrollment is likely to cost the school system $17 million in funding this coming year, not an insignificant number.

Another challenge for the coming year: determining just how much academic slide occurred during the pandemic and figuring out how to recover from it.

The school system had a summer school enrollment this year that surpassed 7,500, about three times the normal summer school headcount.

For Vianello, however, the end result is proof that Marion County Public Schools managed the pandemic about as well as could have been expected, given the unknowns and the numbers of students and employees involved.

“Our employees were amazing,” he said. “They stepped up to the enormous challenges we faced through the pandemic. But we did it, and we did it collectively. The data shows what we did worked.”

‘The safety of the teachers was not a priority. Our district expected our teachers to teach as if COVID wasn’t here. And that wasn’t realistic.’

– teacher union President Mark Avery