On The Cover:
Kingfisher Academy:
School in the Time of Pandemic While most Metro Atlanta students over the past fifteen months were confined to home and struggling through on-line learning, one small independent school in Tucker not only successfully kept students safely in the classroom but increased enrollment by 25%. Kingfisher Academy, which bills itself as a “Human Scale Education School for ages 4 to 13,” was open and operational during the past school year, with only one positive COVID-19 case since last August. Most of the new students have come from other schools in the DeKalb, Decatur and Gwinnett systems, all of which repeatedly flipped between virtual and on-site attendance, and frustrated parents and students when they moved completely to on-line last spring. “We were constantly fielding calls from parents looking for a way to offer in-person schooling for their bright, bored kids,” said Debbie Gathmann, executive director of Kingfisher. “Changing schedules weekly made families struggle with planning ahead. That’s why we tried to stay steady and managed to run a relatively stable schedule of face-to-face learning for the entire school year.” Early on in the pandemic, the school enacted a strict COVID plan that was created under the guidance of the CDC and the DeKalb Health Department. Masks were mandatory for everyone on school property or involved in any offsite school activities. No visitors, including parents, were allowed in the classrooms. Disinfecting wipes were used every couple of hours on all hightouch surfaces, but the main plan emphasized masking, washing hands, not combining classes and keeping everyone physical distancing. The school suspended cooking and serving hot lunch; everyone – students, faculty and staff - brought their lunches daily. Gathmann says that the school’s success in fighting COVID was due to the
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complete and total cooperation of everyone involved with the school. “It is totally puzzling to me to hear that larger schools were having trouble enforcing masks,” stated Gathmann. “If Kroger could do it, why couldn’t schools? When a few potential parents last summer announced to me that their child wouldn’t be wearing a mask, we gently let them know that they would need to find a different school. Our own parent population was totally supportive— sending in cartons of wipes, buying gloves for us, sending paper towels.” The students easily adapted to the regulations. “Amazingly, they acted like they’ve always worked this way,” explained Gathmann. “My youngest class wore masks as if it was always part of school. Sometimes when they saw photos up in the hallways from the previous year, someone would ask, ‘Why don’t they have on their masks?’” Kingfisher divides the students into three multi-age classes—one for
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