As spring will soon round the corner to summer, the end of the school year in the Monadnock Region is looking much as it did in 2019.
And it’s not just the familiar daffodils pushing up through the earth or the muddy trails winding across Pisgah State Park. High-schoolers will soon don glittery dresses and sharp tuxedos at their proms, while college students will gather with loved ones to accept their diplomas and toss their caps — a refreshing sight after two years of limited gatherings and stifled celebrations.
But as the protocols and policies of the COVID-19 pandemic melt away, there are, of course, lingering impacts. Across the country and here in the Monadnock Region, schools are confronting behavioral challenges as students reacclimate to in-person learning. There are academic gaps as disrupted instruction — which has bounced between remote, hybrid and in-person models for two years — saw some students fall behind. And as educators navigate unprecedented challenges, many have left the sector, and districts are grappling with staff shortages.
So it may be the understatement of the century, but this has been a turbulent two years for education.
Evan Fletcher, a student at Making Community Connections charter school in Keene — also known as MC2 — is planning to graduate in December. He’s been a student at MC2 for the past five years.
“I do think, for the most part, obviously, [the pandemic] was very disruptive,” he said Wednesday.
But the challenging circumstances pushed him and his peers to be adaptable and ready to persevere through difficulties, he said.
To some extent, the pandemic also fortified relationships within the school.
“Our school community has always been really strong, and I think that after spending so much time away from each other, when we first got back, everyone was super happy to meet up again,” he said. “And that connection has stayed strong throughout the pandemic.”
MC2 Executive Director Chris O’Reilly echoed that sentiment.
“As a result of having gone through this, I think we’re going to become stronger and better prepared for anything else that might come down the pipeline,” he said.
Local administrators agree — while the pandemic has been a dark cloud hanging over the education sector, there are indeed some silver linings.
There have been impacts, positive ones, stemming from the public health crisis that will serve students, educators and their greater communities long into the future.
Nick Handy, communications coordinator for the Jaffrey-Rindge Cooperative School District, previously worked as a reporter for The Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, a role that saw him attending many a school board meeting.
“There were many nights where I was the only one at the school board meeting,” he recalled in a recent interview.
Now, he helps broadcast those meetings online, and while there still may be only a few people attending in person, he said there are often anywhere from six to 30 people tuning in to the livestreams. When there have been big-ticket agenda items, more than 200 people have virtually joined the meeting, he said, and dozens more catch up later when the video is shared on YouTube.
“If you’re looking at all that in totality, you’re going from having nobody — and having nobody informed about what’s going on because they’re not there — to having … say, an audience of seven,” he said. “And we’ll have 20 people view the YouTube videos — that’s 27 people you didn’t capture before.”
Social-distancing protocols have ushered in an era of live-streaming and video recordings for the public’s benefit. Like Jaffrey-Rindge, several other school districts and towns have used streaming technology to bring their meetings straight to residents’ living rooms.
Handy added that he’s heard from several community members who had never attended a school board meeting before the pandemic, who now tune in while doing dishes or eating dinner. Jaffrey-Rindge Cooperative has become so proficient in the technology, the towns of Jaffrey and Rindge both asked the district to livestream their town meetings this year, Superintendent Reuben Duncan added.
But why stop at school board meetings? Handy said the district has been considering other ways the equipment could benefit staff and students, which could include establishing a broadcasting club for learners, he said.
The Keene School District plans to expand its livestreaming capabilities — which already include board meetings — to also stream plays and athletic events, according to Superintendent Robert Malay of N.H. School Administrative Unit 29. He expects the infrastructure to be ready in time to broadcast Keene High’s graduation June 10.
The pandemic also pushed schools to get used to employing other technological tools to address learning gaps. Google Classroom, for example, has allowed students to access lessons and materials while absent, Malay said.
And the increase in student absences over the past two years has provided an opportunity for educators to re-examine how they can personalize learning to meet the needs of different students in different situations, said SAU 29 Assistant Superintendent Brian Campbell.
Even before the spring of 2020, MC2 was using a digital learning management system and gave every student a laptop upon enrollment, O’Reilly said. But over the course of the pandemic, students and staff alike sharpened their Zoom skills, and the school also plans to work with an IT professional to learn how it might bolster its hybrid-learning model.
“We feel there’s still a need for that, for students to be able to basically learn anywhere, to have part of their courses be online and part in person, whether it’s in a school building here or out in the community,” he said.
And its not just K-12 students who have benefited from technological advancements. Keene State College “invested heavily” in technology to ensure students could continue their education regardless of where in the world they are, President Melinda Treadwell said. Before the pandemic, the college had tech-equipped classrooms with projection and recording capabilities, Treadwell said. But the public health crisis revealed the need for further improvements, including synchronous bandwidth for livestreaming, audio and multiple cameras.
It offered Keene State — which is principally a residential college — a chance to set up infrastructure that will allow students to keep up with their course work, even if they have to leave for an extended period of time, such as for medical reasons.
In response to the pandemic, the federal government made billions of dollars available to help schools navigate the changing education landscape. Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Release funds could be used for costs including technology and services to bolster remote-learning infrastructure or mental-health initiatives for students.
In SAU 29, some of those funds will go toward establishing new positions at Keene High, like an at-risk coordinator who will work with students who are struggling in a traditional school setting. While the federal funds are non-recurring — meaning the district will have to find a different way to fund the position after two years — they’ll enable the school to gauge the effectiveness of such a position before committing to it long-term.
Back in Jaffrey-Rindge, ESSER funds allowed the district to upgrade its clock system. While it may not sound like a particularly glamorous effort, the new system involves monitors hung up in classrooms, displaying not just the time, but also announcements from the superintendent’s office, Duncan said.
This eliminates the need for an intercom and can improve safety, Duncan said. For example, if an intruder were to pull the fire alarm — which would funnel staff and students into one area, making them susceptible to attack — a message would be displayed across the clock monitors, telling people to hunker down in their classrooms.
In addition to using ESSER funds to staff after-school sessions to help students get caught up, MC2 is planning to bolster a few of its programs, O’Reilly said. MC2 already strives to get students outdoors when possible, O’Reilly said, but with additional funding, the school is looking at other ways to include environmental studies. That could include taking trips up to the White Mountains or starting a wilderness first-aid program.
On Friday afternoons at Jaffrey Grade School, the school’s youngest children — from kindergarten through second grade — can be found running, playing, skipping and hopping under the supervision of Franklin Pierce University students.
The school’s Be Active club was established in the fall, in part, to help improve children’s mental health during the pandemic. But as the club grew in popularity, it also strengthened the district’s relationship with Franklin Pierce. With dozens of kids zooming around, the district worked with university athletes looking for some volunteer hours to help monitor them.
The club is one of a few that were founded in response to the isolation kids were experiencing, Duncan said.
Students valued their connections with one another in a new way, and the pandemic spurred new initiatives to engage, he said. Among them was a volleyball club that has since grown to become a junior varsity team.
Campbell, of SAU 29, noted that the pandemic has also affected the relationships between educators, as they relied on each other to share resources, strategies and moral support.
O’Reilly noticed a similar dynamic among MC2 teachers.
“It strengthened the bonds we have among our staff,” he said, adding that the school maintained the same group of educators throughout the pandemic.
The past two years have underscored not only the relationships between students and between educators, but also between community entities, said Treadwell, of Keene State.
The challenging circumstances fostered “deeper and more meaningful” relationships than she had ever known in her more than two decades of working in the Monadnock Region, she said.
She recalled a time early in the pandemic when she was invited to meet with officials from the city, county and Cheshire Medical Center. While Keene State had collaborated with each of those entities in the past, she said this was the first time they all gathered to work toward a shared goal.
Now, two years later, those experiences set the foundations and established the relationships to more effectively work toward other goals, Treadwell said. More recently, the college has been coordinating with the city, county, hospital and River Valley Community College to address the shortage of health care workers in our area.
“I think one of the most profound, positive things for me is the closeness of relationships between the city, the hospital, the college, K-12 educational system, local not-for-profits, local businesses — how we all came together to support one another and adapt,” she said. “Those relationships are going to carry us forward.”
Sentinel staff created this series through the Monadnock Region Health Reporting Lab.