Superintendent Reflects On Returning To School, Lessons Learned

Returning to school for the 2020-21 year was a challenge for every district across the United States.

In the midst of a global pandemic, all districts managed COVID-19 differently. Some continued virtual learning, some did a combination of in-person and virtual and some, like Crawford County R-1, set up guidelines and protocols to find the safest return to the classroom.

Last July, Superintendent Dr. Kyle Gibbs held two public meetings to lay out how the district would proceed with the school year.

Bourbon was spreading kids out, limiting them to small groups and mandating face coverings during passing times.

The district had several cases over the next nine months and dozens of students were forced to quarantine.

As the year went on, a vaccine became available and cases began to drop, the district was able to loosen some of the restrictions.

It was an interesting year for Gibbs, who was tasked with balancing the health and safety of the school population while ensuring that learning could still happen.

A year later, the district learned a lot and Gibbs doesn’t think the gap in learning was as bad as feared.

Teachers and students were eager to have as normal a school year as possible after missing more than two months in spring 2020.

“The teachers jumped in and tried to make up the ground they lost,” Gibbs said. “The kids were ready to get back to school. There was more intensity with teachers knowing they had to make up ground.”

Gibbs said teachers came in at the end of the last school year, planned a curriculum and met with the teachers a grade below. Those teachers went over everything missed during the final two months and spent the first few weeks of the 2020-21 year filling in those gaps.

With the benefit of dry winter weather in December and January, teachers were able to establish a good pace.

“They kept that intensity until state testing took place,” Gibbs said.

Improved Behavior

One positive byproduct of the restrictions was improvement in behavior.

Instead of students congregating in the mornings, they had to go straight to their classrooms. Gibbs said it wasn’t popular with teachers at first.

“You have 100 or 200 kids in the gym and they would get pumped up for the day,” he said. “Then they would start fighting.”

Teachers soon realized that without large groups of students meeting and having assigned seats, the days were smoother and more productive.

The district will carry over that policy into the next school year.

Gibbs said they will continue to have smaller lunch groups as well, since those periods were ripe for inciting rowdy behavior.

Fewer students will be in the hallways during transition from one period to the next. At the middle school, the seventh and eighth grade students are dismissed by different bells.

Bus drivers also learned techniques that cut down on behavior issues and made their routes smoother, Gibbs said.

APR

Every year, a district receives an Annual Performance Report (APR), which judges them on testing, attendance, college and career readiness and more.

There was no state testing in 2020, but it returned in 2021 and districts will receive those scores later this year.

“I’m optimistic we didn’t fall off too far in APR,” Gibbs said.

Asked if the data could be skewed because so many different districts took different approaches to the school year, he said yes.

Gibbs said the state will categorize districts by their learning method.

Schools that saw more cases and quarantines could have worse numbers than usual. Gibbs said when students were sent home due to exposure, they fell behind.

“Some kids were out for close to a month,” he said. “Kids were doing makeup work that wasn’t as meaningful and they weren’t getting feedback from the teachers.”

The start of the 2021-22 school year is a little less than two months away and some things will go back to normal.

However, the district learned a lot.

Gibbs said he attended a superintendents conference and they were asked to reflect on the past year.

“This was bad and we hated that we had to go through this,” said Gibbs, but added that some of it will become “the new normal.”