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eems like longer, but just a year ago, in the run up to the fall 2020 semester, the plan for Mon County schools was “hybrid” attendance. Students with last names beginning A through L would attend in person two days a week, with M through Z attending remotely, online. They would switch places two other days, and on the
fifth day everyone would be remote. Best laid plans. What really happened is, students started the semester fully remote because of a spike in COVID-19 cases, and they didn’t go hybrid until October. Thanksgiving sent them back home until nearly February. After one more month of hybrid attendance, enough school personnel had been vaccinated that families were able to choose between fully in-person and fully remote for the remainder of the school year. But that oversimplifies what felt, week to week, like swirling chaos. “The word we used was ‘pivot,’” says Clay-Battelle Middle / High School Principal David Cottrell. “And it was almost a constant pivot. We’d just get something planned, and then we’d have to change because somebody had been through contact tracing or there was some new rule. It was just constant change.” Teachers rewrote lesson plans and found their internet chops. Students juggled multiple online learning platforms and disruption to their friendships. And parents held it all together somehow on top of the COVID-19 stresses to their own careers, incomes, and family and social lives. Looking back, though, most people already feel that everyone made the best of a tough situation. It didn’t all work. But then, a lot of it did—well enough that some things will become standard practice. We talked with families and educators across the county and with Schools Superintendent Eddie Campbell about how last year went, what has families concerned, and which things changed for the better. Here’s what it all means for school this fall. smoothing re - entry Practically since the pandemic started, we’ve all been saying we just want to get back to normal. As this magazine goes to print, the plan this fall is for students to ride buses together and be in the classrooms with their teachers, mask-free, just like normal. Principals talk
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