By Brian P. Easler Head of School
LEADING WMA: OPENING OF SCHOOL
Opening of school a complete team effort To guide us in our planning and preparations, we utilized the expertise of four leaders in their respective fields who served as our unofficial advisory council. • Dr. Bob Brown, president of Boston University and a member of the panel of college and university presidents that provided school-opening guidance to the state • Dr. Tom LeBlanc, president of The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. • Dr. Bonnie Faulkner Ryan ’82, a WMA Trustee and emergency medicine physician at UMass Memorial Hospital in Worcester and front-line COVID-19 care specialist • Dr. Mark Keroack ’72, a specialist in infectious disease, president and CEO of Baystate Health in Springfield and member of (Massachusetts) Governor Baker’s Reopening Advisory Board This assembly of professionally and geographically ideal advisors was a critical source of information and guidance, especially in the early stages of planning, and a sounding board for WMA as we prepared to navigate uncharted territory. We quickly realized that our efforts would need to revolve around three primary directives: Walking down The Hill on a casual dress code day.
of the COVID-19 pandemic, long before most other schools began thinking about the 2020–2021 school year, the Wilbraham & Monson Academy Administration and Board of Trustees began planning. Why? Because we knew that we needed to open the campus, safely, to in-person programming. Families invest in WMA for the educational experience, not simply an online instructional program. With so much unknown, especially early on, we knew this would be a significant undertaking. From the very beginning
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WMA’s rapid transition to online learning in the spring was extremely effective, especially for the limited time available to make it happen. We were thoughtful and decisive in our actions, and we led the way among our peer schools for timely and successful communication and implementation of our plans. But, we also knew, with four spring and summer months to plan, that we could do even better. So, we started with one primary goal in mind: safely open the Academy for the 2020–2021 school year and end the year in a solid position to launch into the equally critical following year.
1. We would need an educationally sound program that could adapt quickly to potentially changing circumstances and that afforded seamless engagement, whether people could be on campus or were required to be remote. 2. We would need a rigorous testing program — fear of the unknown was a primary adversary in this effort, so knowing when and where the virus was on campus was a key to managing it. 3. We would need to implement as many precautions as possible to prevent transmission of the virus on campus when it inevitably arrived.
