Back to school has superintendent more confident after a year of COVID management

Editor’s note: This story was published in print prior to new mandate from the state requiring face coverings indoors in K-12 schools.

A year ago, Shannon Grimsley was facing the unfathomable.

Another school year was about to begin, but one under the perilous cloud of COVID. Could she, as superintendent of Rappahannock County Public Schools (RCPS), and her teachers and staff keep kids safe in the midst of a pandemic? And, how well could they really educate students while relying heavily on online learning in a community with sketchy broadband service?

Today, with classes underway again, Grimsley is more sure-footed.  “We feel so much better prepared and so much more confident in the system this year,” she said. “We know what to do when we do have cases. We know how to contain.”

Only a handful of cases were reported in the school district last school year, including an isolated outbreak on the wrestling team in January. That resulted in a switch to all-distance learning at the high school for a few days until contact tracing was completed.

But the effect of COVID’s ripples on students’ performance, social development and emotional health clearly took a toll, Grimsley noted.  “There are a lot of layers of complexity when you’re trying to provide the best education possible during a pandemic,” she said. “When you’re weighing the risks we’ve seen with mental health, academic slide and the digital divide, all those pieces can create a generational impact that’s severe.”

More disruptive behavior

Kathy Sickler, the school district’s social worker, would agree. She saw firsthand the consequences of a lack of structure and months of social isolation. “With the younger kids, we saw more disruptive behavior,” she said. “Most were around inappropriate social interactions with their peers when they were in school. I’m attributing that to a lack of socialization when they were locked down at home.” 

Older students who struggled often were those whose anxiety and self-destructive behaviors were exacerbated by the pandemic, according to Sickler.  She said she referred about two dozen students to outside therapists the past year, roughly twice as many as usual. And, while referrals in the past usually were “situational”— tied to a traumatic event at home or a bad breakup — the more recent ones have related more to an overall devolution of a student’s mental health, such as a deepening depression stemming from loneliness or a sense of helplessness.

Both Grimsley and Sickler believe that having students back in school five days a week instead of following a hybrid schedule will make a difference in getting them back on track. 

“The kids seem pretty excited about returning to school this year,” said Sickler. “The structure of a normal schedule gives them something to look forward to. And they won’t feel as much on edge”

So far, she added, the threat of a surge in COVID cases from more transmissible mutations of the coronavirus hasn’t seemed to diminish their enthusiasm. In fact, Sickler said she hasn’t heard many students or adults in the community talking about the delta variant, which is believed to be about 50 percent more contagious than the original virus.

“I caution students that there still may need to be some changes,” she said. “This could still be a very fluid school year.”  

Data-driven decisions 

Shifting back to in-person classes five days a week is just one of the school district’s moves toward normalcy. Extracurricular activities and regular athletic team schedules are returning. Thanks in part to an upgraded ventilation system, students will be able to gather in school hallways again, and they’ll be able to eat in the lunchroom, although a seating chart will be used to facilitate contact tracing if it’s needed.

Students will still need to wear masks when they’re on school buses, as required by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but the school board has voted to make face coverings optional in the buildings. It gave Grimsley the authority to mandate masks in the event of an outbreak, but also to remove the order once it’s contained.   For now, plexiglass shields will remain attached to students’ desks, according to Grimsley.

The school district has developed a detailed plan on how it will respond to COVID cases based on where they occur and the size of an outbreak. It could range from quarantining individual students or a whole classroom for 10 days, to switching an entire school to distance learning for two weeks if multiple outbreaks occur. 

“This system was really developed to do a couple of things,” Grimsley said, “understanding that we’re probably not going to be out of the woods with this thing for a while, and knowing that we’re going to take a systematic approach based on data. We’re trying to remove emotion and fear and politics. Our decisions have to be driven by contextual data.”

No compliance issues

While broad statistics such as community vaccination and COVID transmission rates are relevant, the superintendent said the most critical data reflects what’s actually happening in the school buildings. Are outbreaks sporadic and isolated? Or have they become difficult to contain?  What’s the staff absentee rate due to quarantines or illness?

“That’s when you may have to switch to distance learning,” she said. “We never ran into that all last year.”

Grimsley said she doesn’t know how many teachers and staff members have been vaccinated, but noted that 60 percent had signed up to get shots. “I feel very good about the condition of our staff,” she said.

RCPS has taken other steps to try to close learning gaps students may have suffered last year, particularly in the elementary school.  It has hired two instructors who will teach “transition” classes for kids not quite ready to be promoted to first or second grade. Plus, another kindergarten teacher has been added to limit class sizes at that level. 

Also, as part of the school district’s new wellness center, two mental health counselors will be available to high school and elementary school students every Monday and Tuesday.

“We learned so much about the social and emotional toll something like this can take. Especially when you’re a rural district with limited access to services,” Grimsley said. “And we learned how important the school system really is to families and how much they depend on us.”

She said one reason she feels optimistic about the new school year is how students and the community have responded, despite the stress and uncertainty of living through a pandemic. “Parents were so supportive,” Grimsley said. “When we shared data and were transparent, people were so cooperative. We didn’t have any issues with compliance. And I really doubt that we will have any this year, too.”

Then there’s the matter of having a far better sense of what to expect from a virus that not that long ago put the whole country on lockdown. “We’ve been dealing with this for 16 months now,” said Grimsley. “It’s not our first rodeo.”

By Randy Rieland — For Foothills Forum

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