Opening day: Reinvented 2020-21 school year starts today
Crossett Brook Middle School staff meet Monday, Aug. 31, outside on the soccer field for a socially distanced, in-service staff meeting as they prepare for the start of the 2020-21 school year that begins today. Photo by Melissa Williams.
September 8, 2020 | By Lisa ScagliottiMarch 13 started off like a typical Friday school day across Vermont with some of the usual jokes about it being an unlucky day. Few thought it would be the last day students and their teachers across Vermont would be together for “normal” school for the year. Even fewer likely imagined the weeks that followed as they finished the school year via email and internet video chats with everyone checking in individually from home.
No one knew what the COVID-19 pandemic had in store for the usual way of going to school or work or anyplace else for that matter at the time.
Today, many Vermont students head back to school in person while others start the 2020-21 school year remotely. Depending on the school district’s plans for reopening and individual student choices, some may continue to learn from home for a while. Others may don face masks along with backpacks and new sneakers and make their way back to their classrooms in pared-back groups allowing ample room for them to keep distant from each other as in-person instruction resumes.
In the Harwood Union Unified School District, multiple scenarios will play out this week. After eight days of intense in-service planning, teachers and staff across the district will welcome back some students face-to-face. Others will launch into online classes. Some students will attend today. Others will make their in-person debut Thursday.
In a message to all district staff last week, Superintendent Brigid Nease cheered on the behind-the-scenes work to reinvent many of the usual routines.
“My message as we start this year is absolutely without a doubt one of gratitude, admiration and highest praise for all the hard work, lack of sleep, cognitive stretching, and downright resilience and grit our HUUSD staff and administrators have brought to this crisis,” she wrote. “Your concern for others and degree of selflessness shines through as we tackle reopening our schools. Few realize how much EVERYTHING needs to change to pull this off. I appreciate you all more than you can know.”
All aboard after a temp check
School buses will be on the road bright and early this morning with new passengers riding alongside bus drivers. Bus monitors have been hired to conduct health screenings for each student boarding the bus at designated “community stops” rather than each typical bus stop along each route.
Parents are asked to wait with their students at specific locations where the buses will stop. Monitors will take each student’s temperature and ask several questions about recent travel and how the student feels. If all looks good, the student will be cleared to board the bus and parents can go on their way. If temps are up or an answer to a screening question raises a red flag, the student will be sent home with their parent.
Similar steps will be taken with the students arriving at schools by car with their parents at designated entrances.
From there, the school day will unfold with introductions to many new routines based on keeping students in small groups, at a safe distance apart, and minding the latest guidance for hand-washing, etc. to prevent the spread of germs.
There are new procedures to learn regarding belongings (no lockers to be used for now), meals (eating in classrooms), even water-fountain breaks (fill your bottle, no sipping from the tap).
In recent days, families have received many communications from school officials from the district’s main office, their individual school principals, and their student’s classroom teachers. There is much new information to process and administrators say the early days will be focused on learning new routines, getting students and teachers reacquainted with each other, and acclimating everyone to their classroom settings both in person and online.
Thatcher Brook Primary School Principal Denise Goodnow said the last two weeks of detailed preparations have been unlike any experience she’s had in 28 years as an educator. For some, it’s meant adjusting their plans right down to the wire.
“The staff at TBPS are rock stars and will do their very best for the students we love,” Goodnow said. “Four of our faculty were reassigned two weeks ago to the Harwood Union Remote Academy to teach grades K-3 and they have worked 24/7 since then to be ready to go on September 8th.”
Administrators admit that they have thought of a lot, but possibly not everything. Two words -- patience and flexibility -- keep popping up as one talks with teachers, administrators and even coaches about the new school year.
“We are all going to exercise patience and flexibility with one another and ask that our families do the same,” Goodnow said.
Expecting the model to change quickly
The Harwood district’s opening model is a hybrid with one day of in-person instruction for students and four days remote. Classes are divided into two groups split between attending either Tuesday or Thursday for the first two weeks. School officials say they are aiming to move to two days in school/three days remote as soon as the week of Sept. 21.
Families also have a choice to keep their students home full-time with remote instruction from teachers assigned to teach lessons online until further notice. Meanwhile, Harwood high school students will have a variety of remote learning opportunities to supplement their time on campus.
For those looking to keep up, important information can be found in several key places:
Email messages from the district office, school principals and teachers have been landing in parent/guardian inboxes.
School websites contain the same information that includes video messages from teachers and staff explaining and demonstrating many of the new routines such as boarding and riding school buses, taking outside mask breaks, and even how custodial staff will sanitize classrooms.
The school district has created a weekly Community Bulletin shared in emails and school websites and posted to the HUUSD.org homepage. It hits the main topics and contains links to frequently asked questions, videos and more.
School leaders have also done a series of Monday-night online question and answer sessions regarding reopening school since the end of July. Those were recorded and can be viewed online on the district’s YouTube channel or on Mad River TV. The sessions covered a wide range of topics from outdoor classrooms and logistics around remote learning, to school bus protocols and even library books.
There is another Q&A session scheduled for Monday, Sept. 14 at 6:30 p.m. Instructions on how to watch are on the HUUSD.org homepage.
The Thatcher Brook Primary School chickens enjoy their birds-eye view of the playground, bus loop, and back entrance to the school which should be bustling today as school gets back in session. Photo by Lisa Scagliotti.
Free breakfast and lunch for all students
Contrary to popular belief, there actually will be free lunch and breakfasts, too, for every youngster in the school district age 18 and under at least through Dec. 31. Thanks to recent decisions by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the school district will receive federal funding for every meal it serves, according to HUUSD Schools Food & Nutrition Co-Director Erika Dolan.
That means all student meals will be offered free of charge to all students regardless of income five days a week, she said.
Students will be able to eat free on their in-person days in school and on remote days, they can visit the school to pick up food to-go. Meals will be available to those choosing full-time remote learning and homeschooling as well.
“We want every kid to eat for free. That’s the goal,” Dolan said.
Families will be asked to fill out an online form for the to-go meals they would like for the week in order for staff to prepare the right number of breakfasts and lunches, Dolan explained. On days students are in school, teachers will get lunch counts for that day, so pre-ordering is not necessary. Menus and the signup form are on the district’s food service webpage.
Dolan stressed that by participating in the food program, students are not “taking away” a meal from another student in need. “The more meals we serve, the more local food we can purchase and the more support we will receive,” she said.
The federal expansion of the program runs through Dec. 31 although Dolan said she’s hopeful it will be extended beyond that.
‘The Season of Gratitude’
The start of the school year means a return to the soccer pitch and the volleyball court, field hockey and football fields, golf links and cross-country trails, and recently Vermont lakes for bass fishing.
Whether and how the fall athletics season moves ahead is still yet to be determined although state and local officials are cautiously optimistic.
Instead of hosting an in-person meeting for student athletes and their parents, Harwood Middle and High School Athletic Director Chris Langevin put together a 19-minute video presentation about the upcoming season. Team trainings and tryouts that usually begin in August were postponed until today when high school teams begin; middle school practices begin Sept. 15.
Langevin begins his presentation setting the scene: “The fall 2020 season is going to be a season unlike any other. This is the first time we have ever opened a sports season during a global pandemic so we are calling this ‘The Season of Gratitude.’”
Because there is much uncertainty about how the next few weeks will go, there are “a lot of hopes,” Langevin says, but no schedules are posted yet as teams will begin focusing on training and practices for the first two weeks.
“We are going to stay positive and we are going to be flexible,” he said.
The State Agency of Education has issued guidelines for how fall sports can function with public health precautions in place. But schools are starting the year in the second phase of re-opening during which there are to be no inter-scholastic competitions.
State officials have designated the third phase of reopening as the appropriate stage for teams from different schools to meet for competitions. State officials have indicated that the Step III phase may begin as soon as late September at which point schedules for an abbreviated high school season would be released through the Vermont Principals Association. Langevin said middle school details are also yet to be determined.
Kindergarten teacher Anet Hammett (left) meets her new student Annika and her mom Kelley Hackett outside Thatcher Brook Primary School on Friday. The newly painted white dots on the path are 6 feet apart to help with distancing. Photo by Lisa Scagliotti.
Ready or not
By Friday, schools were buzzing with final preparations for opening day. At Thatcher Brook, staff handed out new devices to some students and kindergarten teachers chatted with new students and parents outside.
At Crossett Brook, team teachers met together in school for short individual Zoom calls with students at home. The Music Department shared on Facebook photos of the music room with chairs spaced far apart using blue-taped Xs on the floor.
Another post features a recent closeup photo of a bright-green plastic ukulele alongside a container of sanitizing wipes. “Year after year, kids vote ukulele as their favorite part of CBMS music class,” wrote music teacher Molly Dubois. “But our lovely wooden ukes would NOT appreciate 4x daily wipe downs. Good news! Let’s welcome our new fleet of composite plastic ukes!”
Crossett Brook Principal Tom Drake is back this year after spending last school year as interim principal at The Warren School. He tells students in a back-to-school video that he’s eager to be back. After all of the recent preparations, everyone is feeling ready, Drake said.
“Ready to have real students back in our midst, ready to focus on relationships and health and academics, and just ready to get back to the energy that a school building brings,” he said. “Will it be different? Absolutely! But we are committed to turning lemons into lemonade, and to pursuing a path that brings us together more rather than less, and right now that feels good and right.”