Pandemic forced many lasting changes
Two years ago next week, life in Orange County changed as we knew it when Mayor Jerry Demings announced a stayat-home order for nonessential jobs.
At the time, there were only about 1,400 known COVID-19 infections in Florida, and 18 people had died. Since then, through waves of coronavirus cases, more than 5.8 million infections have been documented in the state and more than 72,000 have died.
Living with the virus stamped the accelerator on changes throughout society, some of which appear likely to remain with us for years to come. Until the time when the virus isn’t so disruptive, we adapt.
Numerous workers who commuted to the office every day will remain working remotely or in hybrid settings. Some local governments, like in Orlando, allow members of the public to comment on city
or county business remotely, rather than only in person at City Hall.
Lawmakers in Tallahassee allowed bars to send cocktails to go with patrons after restaurants were temporarily allowed to during lockdowns two years ago.
Homebuyers are purchasing properties in some cases without seeing them in person, relying on virtual walkthroughs and closings. Students are logging on at home to receive tutoring, rather than staying on campus after hours.
Restaurants have expanded their seating to add on-street parking spaces in Orlando and Winter Garden, meaning more patrons can enjoy their offerings, as well as the fresh air. And procedural court hearings, which previously required in-person attendance, can be handled remotely, allowing defendants, attorneys and other court personnel to save time and money.
Homebuying goes virtual
Ingrid Dodd, a real estate agent, has given countless walkthroughs of homes in her nearly 20 years in the business. But since the start of the pandemic, fewer of the clients have been walking with her.
“I’ve done a number of FaceTime [tours] for clients who are somewhere else,” Dodd said. “I walk around holding up my phone, saying, ‘This is this, and over here…’ ”
As with much of the business world, “FaceTime and Zoom have become very important for Realtors,” said Tansey Soderstrom, president of the Orlando Regional Realtor Association. While the technology to connect remotely existed before COVID-19, the pandemic made virtual meetings a crucial part of the real estate process.
Zillow also saw a 19% rise in traffic in 2020, an additional 1.5 billion visits. The prevalence of online tools has opened Orlando’s housing market to the nation and the world, Dodd said.
“I have written contracts for clients who have not seen the property,” Dodd said.
But the pandemic didn’t only presage a technological revolution in home buying, it also changed people’s preferences in a home, Soderstrom said, including increased demand for rooms with a door that closes that can be used as a home office.
“They want their home to be a place they want to spend time,” she said. “Before the pandemic, no one spent as much time in their home as they do now.”
Working from home has also given employees around the country the option to choose where they live, with residents from northern states seeking warmer climes.
Florida added 211,305 people between July 2020 and July 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, adding to the unprecedented housing demand.
Orlando’s median home price has risen 38% from February 2020 to $345,000 last month, according to the Orlando Regional Realtor Association.
Dodd says it’s the hottest market she’s ever seen.
“I used to be lucky if seven or eight people would show up [to an open house],” Dodd said. “Now, I’ll get 50 people.”
But that also works the other way. Dodd said she had local clients who decided that working from home meant it wasn’t worth dealing with Orlando’s high prices.
“They could go anywhere,” she said. “They ended up going to Iowa because they could buy a lot more house than they could in Orlando.”
Online tutoring gains traction
During the pandemic, many students attended school via computer and many struggled, finding it hard to learn well while online for an entire school day.
Educators across Central Florida agreed most students learned best with face-to-face instruction from their teachers and activities with their classmates.
But online tutoring — devised to help students while keeping a distance during the pandemic — may prove the exception.
Students, parents and teachers like the flexibility online tutoring provides, administrators said, even with face-to-face schooling again the norm. Traditional after-school tutoring helps some children, they noted, but sometimes interferes with children’ other activities or creates transportation hardships and that can limit participation.
The Lake, Orange and Seminole county school districts, with the help of federal grants, all are piloting tutoring options now and may expand online offerings next school year.
Private tutoring companies, such as Wyzant and Varsity Tutors, have seen a surge in demand, too. Wyzant reported a 178% increase in online lessons from 2019 to 2021 in Florida, for example. In a statement, the company said it expects online tutoring will remain “a powerful tool for improving academic achievement and addressing learning loss … in a post-COVID world.”
In Orange, online tutoring in math is offered at 12 middle schools from 5 to 9 p.m. The teachers who offer the service can demonstrate how to solve problems and watch as students do their work. Students can sign up for a block of time, if they know they need help, or log in for immediate assistance if they’re stumped by homework.
Both parents and students like the convenience and the assistance, said Jenny Gibson, executive area director in the Orange County Public Schools innovations office.
“We want to bring down the stress levels for both parents and students,” Gibson said. “The real-time support is essential. We don’t want children to shut down.”
In Seminole, some high school teachers started offering online tutoring last school year, when some students did school virtually, but kept it up this year because they found it filled a need, said Mike Rice, assistant superintendent over high schools.
Now the district is piloting an online tutoring initiative that will start small but likely will expand next school year.
With traditional afterschool tutoring, “transportation is always an issue,” Rice said, as some students need to catch the school bus to get home, limiting their opportunities to stay for extra help.
“This opens the opportunity for everyone,” he added.
This school year, Lake County Schools focused on in-person tutoring but allowed online options if some students wanted it. They, too, expect they’ll do more next year.
Kati Pearson, executive director for academic services and interventions, said the pandemic demonstrated that, for bread-andbutter schooling, “it’s more effective being in front of a teacher.”
But it also revealed that some online options appeal to families, among them online tutoring, online parent-teacher meetings and even some online student clubs, as they allow students at one school to take part in an activity not offered on their campus, she said.
“We are not getting rid of virtual options,” Pearson said. “I think we’ll do both.”
The rise of parklets
Coming out of lockdowns with restaurants and bars reeling from months of little or no revenue, governments offered an array of policies to help them bounce back, from free parking and takeout cocktails, to allowing seating to expand into on-street parking spaces.
Health officials encouraged outdoor dining, contending the fresh air would help limit the spread of the virus.
Both Orlando and Winter Garden allowed some restaurants to utilize so-called parklets, and appear poised to do so for years to come.
After Orlando’s one-year pilot was due to expire last year, the city extended the parklet program for three years.
At Winter Garden’s popular Plant Street area, parklets also remain popular among businesses, and the city also moved to permanently turn two parking spaces into outdoor seating areas, said Tanja Gerhartz, the city’s Economic Development director.
“The City is using many of our parking spaces along Plant Street for outdoor dining,” she said in an email. “These areas were created during COVID but they remain so popular that we still have them.”
In Orlando, the program took root in Thornton Park, for its walkable stretch of bars and restaurants near Lake Eola.
At Burton’s Thornton Park, one of Orlando’s oldest bars, the addition of the parklet and its seven picnic tables meant an additional 42 seats. The parklet is shared with The Mason Jar, a restaurant operated by the same company next door.
“You can come here any night of the week and [the parklet] is packed. They’re either eating food from The Mason Jar or having drinks from Burton’s,” said Jeff Darnell, the general manager of Burton’s and owner of The Mason Jar. “Monthly or yearly, it’s thousands of dollars.”
In Orlando, the parklets are wooden barriers that separate tables from vehicle traffic. On Sundays, the restaurant Island Time hosts a drag brunch outdoors, which includes its parklet.
Heading east on Washington, more are located at The Falcon, Sperry Deli and Cavo’s.
The barriers and seating also have slowed down traffic in the neighborhood, Darnell said, where some drivers would rip down the brick streets that pedestrians frequent.
The city is happy with the parklets, said David Barilla, the assistant director of Orlando’s Downtown Development Board, and is looking at other areas where they could be successful beyond Thornton Park.
In the neighborhood, two more parklets are in the works, said Lisa Cuatt, the Thornton Park Main Street director, who added she and local businesses were pushing for the city to allow them.
“... At night it’s really warm and welcoming,” she said. “They’ve been great for the businesses in the neighborhood.”
Zoom court catches on
The pandemic shut down trials statewide for months starting in March 2020, creating a huge backlog of unresolved criminal and civil cases. The Florida Supreme Court allowed lower courts to use virtual platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex for legal proceedings and witness testimony.
Two years later, those changes are still in widespread use in most Central Florida courts despite the return to in-person hearings, said Rachel Mattie, an attorney and vice president of the Central Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Before the pandemic, attorneys working crimi
nal cases were spending a large portion of their days at the “cattle call,” an informal term for a hearing where many attorneys appear before a judge to give quick updates for dozens of cases at once.
“Having to drive to the courthouse, find parking, go through security takes a big chunk out of our day and time away from our other cases,” she said.
But during the pandemic, judges allowed attorneys to appear via video or submit written updates instead — and that practice has continued, Mattie said.
“There are some mornings where, because of that, I’m able to appear in four counties,” she said.
Mattie said virtual hearings have also made it easier for defendants to appear in court, as they don’t have to take a day off from work or find child care.
“I think that it serves the community; it serves defendants who don’t have the means of transportation,” she said. “We’re seeing a decrease in the amount of warrants being issued because people are failing to appear for court just because it’s much easier for them to appear via video.”
The continued use of virtual hearings varies from county to county, though, Mattie said. Courts in Polk and Lake counties have mainly gone back to in-person appearance with some exceptions, while larger counties like Orange and Osceola still offer virtual options, she said.
Orange-Osceola Chief Judge Lisa Munyon, who chairs a statewide work group focused on court operations amid COVID19, said she filed a petition with the state Supreme Court to make some of the rule changes seen during the pandemic permanent. The high court has yet to decide.
“I think in some regard, virtual hearings are here to stay,” she said. “They save lawyers a lot of time and money.”
It’s no longer unusual to have witnesses testifying remotely during jury trials, the chief judge said. At a recent trial she presided over, Munyon said a witness appeared from Miami instead of having to make the journey to Orlando to testify.
“It was absolutely seamless,” she said.