District gets handle on lost pupils, virus
Little by little, students are returning to the Watson Chapel School District. For the first few nervous weeks of the school year, no one could figure out where many students had gone.
These “lost” students were a state and national phenomenon, with districts far and wide trying to find students who had been in school the semester before — the semester that blew up in everyone’s face when the coronavirus came on the scene in March. The culprits in a lot of cases, it seems, were miscommunication and confusion.
For Watson Chapel, at least, many of those students are reappearing, it was reported at Monday night’s School Board meeting. The enrollment is in the 2,170 range, which is 44 students off from last year’s average. Not super, considering that districts lose about $7,000 a year for each student who disappears — but an improvement.
“Frankly, it’s pretty stable,” Superintendent Jerry Guess told board members.
Another piece of the education puzzle is trying to teach the students who have opted to learn from home, i.e., not attend face-to-face class where they might put themselves at more risk of being exposed to covid-19. It takes a really motivated student to study from home, we are told, and for some students, it may not be working so well.
For those students, Watson Chapel is throwing the school doors open wide and saying maybe they should try real class again.
“Lots of phone calls were made to parents from secretaries, counselors, principals,” said Kristy Sanders, chairperson of the Ready to Learn Committee, which is the collection of educators responsible for mapping out how all of this in-class and virtual learning is supposed to happen. “Everybody got involved after looking at report card grades and saying, ‘Well, hey, do you think this is just not working well for you since your child is not being successful? Why don’t you consider coming back?’”
Sanders reiterated the safety factor, which is one reason parents and students have chosen to stay home. She said that with the many cleaning and disinfecting and protection protocols in place at the schools, being on campus is safe.
The entreaty is starting to work. Sanders said that since the middle of October, 92 additional students had chosen to go back to in-class instruction, and that since the beginning of the school year, 362 had made that choice.
“So our babies are coming back,” Sanders said.
To the point of the campus being safe, Guess said 84 school districts across the state have reported five or more coronavirus cases, but that Watson Chapel had, so far, avoided checking that box.
“We are not on that list,” the superintendent said. “That’s not to say we won’t be on it next week. You all know that it’s a matter of the contact our students and staff have out in the community as well as here, and we believe that a lot of our quarantine situation results from contact out in the community.”
And “out in the community” looks pretty grim when one is talking about Jefferson County. On the state map, the county is one of eight having the hardest time with covid-19. So it would follow that school districts in those areas would have the biggest challenges.
To that end, Guess said the district is following the science, making sure students are wearing masks and that common areas like hallways, classrooms and other areas are all cleaned with a sanitizing mister each night, all of which, he said, might be the reason the district isn’t on the list with the 84 others.
School districts and educators have had to create parallel universes of instruction, one for online-type classes and one for more traditional classroom instruction, and they’ve had to become hygiene engineers to make sure that for those students and teachers and staff who are at school are safe. We cannot imagine anything more difficult or challenging. Kudos to Watson Chapel for making progress on all fronts.