Kingfisher Academy: School in the Time of Pandemic

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 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

students from four- to seven-years old, one from eight- to ten-years old, and one class for eleven-years-old and up. These multi-age classes are extremely important to the school mission. Family-based grouping allows children to work on material on their own level while still being part of their own social group. Students may have the same teacher for several years, allowing a true in-depth relationship to develop between the kids and the teacher. But COVID reduced the physical mingling between groups and individuals, and there was less exchange between classes than in past years. “Since the school was founded twenty years ago, the oldest kids have always eaten lunch with the youngest kids, and the younger students always had a reading buddy from one of the older classrooms,” explained Gathmann. “This past year, we stayed in our ‘pods’ with little interaction and we didn’t like it, but we did it.”

The most difficult adjustment was the lack of field trips, which has always been a significant part of Kingfisher’s curriculum. In addition to the standard field trips, students travel into the surrounding neighborhood as part of their learning— eating in the restaurants, using the public library and parks, and doing service projects around the neighborhoods that surround the school. Extracurricular activities include options for art, drama, piano, various sports and library book club. “We usually go out and about the metro area at least once or twice a week,” said Gathmann. “But in the past year, trips to the park were pretty much all we could do due to venue closures.” The school found “virtual field trips” not to be meaningful for any group, but now with the lifting of many COVID restrictions for group activities and venues, is looking forward to a return to in-person field trips.

Dealing with the pandemic motivated significant changes to Kingfisher, many of which will stay. Gathmann plans to continue the smaller classes, and believes all schools should consider the value of smaller class size - for better health, and to encourage more intimate education and provide more individual help. “We have always had small classes but we went a bit smaller during this COVID time and everyone has benefited.”

Not having the libraries for research necessitated more computer use, which was a much harder adaptation for the teachers than for the kids, who had always complained that they could find things on the Internet at home much more easily than by digging through books. While most Kingfisher students have computers or laptops of their own, Kingfisher now has an inventory of Chromebooks, available for loan to any student who needs one; the school will upgrade and add computer equipment as needed. The school’s significant increase in computer use also required a change to a much more powerful and faster broadband provider, and plans to upgrade and add additional network equipment as needed.

Kingfisher ended the school year with thirty students, and expects to begin the new year with thirty-five students – the largest enrollment since the school moved to Tucker in 2015. Parents experiencing a year of on-line learning now want their children taught with a more “hands on” approach and a more active, project-based curriculum. Increased scholarship offerings from the state and a growing sense of disconnection with the larger school systems have also prompted parents to consider a movement to smaller independent schools like Kingfisher.

Gathmann knows that students made a lot of sacrifices in their daily lives to stay in school over the past year but feels even the younger ones understood the necessity of “staying the course.” She hopes that the strict rules implemented in the previous school year will allow for a return to a less restrictive environment in the new year. Kingfisher plans to start in August with continued mandatory masking but will see what the CDC recommends in September. All faculty and staff have been vaccinated, as well as the seventh- and eighth-graders, but younger students probably won’t start vaccinations until January 2022, and vaccination won’t be a requirement for enrollment. “We’ll proceed cautiously as we reopen, and put equal emphasis on the health and safety of our students while ensuring their continued emotional and academic growth.”

Kingfisher Academy is located at First Baptist Church of Tucker, at 5073 Lavista Road in Tucker. The full-day program teaches students pre-K through eighth grade. For more information, including fees and registration, visit kingfisheracademy.org or call 678.615.2313.