Mountain Fest 2021 begins Local administrators offer reflections on school shutdown
Friday, March 13, 2020 was a typical day in both the Elk County Catholic School System and St. Marys Area School District. Students, faculty and staff went about their normal routines with no indication that everything was about to be upended.
Elk County Catholic School System President Sam MacDonald and St. Marys Area School District Superintendent Dr. Brian Toth recently reminisced with The Daily Press about that day one year ago when it was first announced that schools would be shut down statewide due to the growing COVID-19 pandemic.
Shut down with no warning
Both Toth and McDonald shared that there was a Zoom meeting on the morning of March 13 with then-Secretary of Education Pedro Rivera to discuss the situation related to the pandemic.
“All Elk County schools held a conference call after the PDE meeting and had agreed that the cases were not existent in Elk County. We would remain open and monitor the situation,” Toth said. “We were not given any clue at the PDE meeting that we would be required to shut down.”
MacDonald added that the state had told everyone that morning that they would not be shutting schools down.
With no advance notice, lo
cal administrators found out about the initial twoweek shutdown with everyone else in the Commonwealth.
“I was on the phone doing an interview with the Washington Post when our secretary handed me the email stating the schools were closed for two weeks,” Toth recalled. “We had zero advance warning. Lucky for SMASD, over several years prior to March 2020, we revamped our technology infrastructure, were replacing all computers, and had completed professional learning for staff of proper use of technology and programs in the classroom.”
MacDonald referred to the state’s decision to wait until the end of the school day to announce the shutdown as having been “the worst possible timing.”
“Kids leave all sorts of things at school: their glasses, inhalers, coats. It was a huge mess,” MacDonald said. “Worse, none of the kids had their books. Think about that. We were all thrust into remote learning with no warning, trying to come up with assignments for these kids, and none of them had their materials. Teachers couldn’t say, ‘Read chapter five and do the problems on page 80.’ None of them had anything. If we had been informed that morning about the shutdown, we’d have sent them home with everything. As it was, we had to spend a good bit of time getting kids back to the building for books, technology, you name it. Then, the rules kept changing. We scheduled pickups for materials several times, only to have the rules change on us at the last minute. Our distribution plans likely broke some rules, but the local police and other officials were really good about giving us the go ahead to make it happen.”
Waiting it out
Governor Tom Wolf’s initial shutdown order, which can still be found on his official website, announced that all K-12 schools in Pennsylvania would be closed for 10 business days beginning on Monday,
March 16, 2020.
At first, local schools were hopeful that they would eventually be able to return to the classroom.
“We were hoping to be allowed to reopen, but as time wore on it be