Both the pandemic and the response of our schools and of our community revealed much about our schools and the city in which we live.
Question: What are the most concerning things that the pandemic exposed with respect to teaching and learning in our city? What were the most encouraging?
7 out of 8 candidates responded
Dianna Biancheria
“As the pandemic transformed our world teaching and learning weighed heavy on everyone’s mind and heart. Learning at home under the best of circumstances takes time, practice, and excellent knowledge of the tools we want to utilize. Under these circumstances unfortunately we had none of those concerns in our favor. The chrome book distribution was an honorable attempt however there were gaps of available staff to distribute at our sites, lack of parents who had available transportation, lack of family members who were able to pick up the chrome books, lack of knowledge of how to properly utilize-the Chrome books, and hotspots in our community. The anticipation of all our teachers and support staff having the expertise to properly teach only by a screen communication was high.
This high level of teachings s learning was extremely unjust as it was new to students, supportive family members, teachers, and support staff. In respect to encouraging aspects Wps efforts to have numerous opportunities to distribute chrome books in addition working closely with city administration to illuminate hotspots in our city. All hands-on deck, the ability to have administration of WPS and our city work collaboratively on concerns was encouraging for our whole community.”
Laura Clancey
“When the pandemic shut down our schools my biggest concern was that we were not ready for it, our students did not have technology, and caregivers were lost. Once we got the technology piece rolled out we were faced with another issue, our students were not prepared to begin full remote learning. Parents were not able to provide the support their children needed. Moving forward, maintaining the level of technology and training is going to be key.”
Jermaine Johnson
“At the very beginning of the pandemic, when we first transitioned to remote learning, the district failed our children. The rollout of Chromebooks was slow, so not all kids had them, and there were ongoing wifi issues. Some families didn’t have wifi at all, and many others didn’t have wifi that supported multiple people being on video at once. Later we got internet hotspots, but then those hotspots literally caught on fire.
Things got somewhat better over time, but I’m focused on what we can do now to better support our children. We need to be focused now on making sure that no child is left behind post-pandemic. That means providing safe and healthy schools with proper ventilation, air conditioning, and drinking water. It means social emotional support, including mental health support, wrap-around services, and trauma-informed policies. It means expanding the arts, civic, STEM, history, and physical education, and ensuring access to mentors and youth programming. Access to mentors and youth programming helped save my life, and we need to make those opportunities available to all of our children.
The most encouraging for me was the resiliency of the teachers and students during this difficult time. The teachers really tried to support and meet the children and families where they were. As I seen with my kids they still engaged and tried to keep those connections with their teachers and peers.”
Jermoh Kamara
“Connectivity issue in our district was greatly exposed. Recent reports by the Worcester Regional Research Bureau and Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce underscore that the complicated nature of Worcester’s digital infrastructure, the volume of providers, various technologies, and different funding streams present major challenges that require focused and sustained leadership by the city‘s municipal and school leadership, as well as a local business, higher education, healthcare and institutional leaders. The Worcester Regional Research Bureau report “Broadening Broadband” well articulates the need for a long-term solution and the possibility of the city implementing its internet service provider. Such a plan would expand access and speed, for a reasonable cost for consumers while providing the same service as private operators.
However, the acquisition to purchase the existing infrastructure by the city would be a huge cost to implement ISP. Some forward-thinking cities, not having their own ISP, are making use of their CARES ACT funding. This is something that the broadband committee for the city should be looking into. Another concerning and encouraging matter that was exposed during the pandemic is Remote Learning. Most of the nonprofits providing early education and childcare assumed the bulk of the care for children during the COVID pandemic by offering remote learning at their facilities. Private and other non-profit organizations stepped up to fund remote learning but little to no funding came from WPS to support nonprofits. Secondly, as there is a high demand for the remote learning services especially as more and more people worked from home or, for those who did not have the option, but still must go to work.
With the high demand there were not enough teachers to meet the demand since non-profits cannot afford to pay their teachers in comparison to the wages being paid by teachers of the same profession in Worcester Public Schools. After-school program services provided by nonprofits in partnership with WPS can also be better improved with better coordination between WPS, Site Administrators, and non-profit service providers. Due to the time lost because of the pandemic and even post pandemic, these services would be crucial to continue to ensure no child is left behind in their learning curve.”
Sue Mailman
“The pandemic deepened and further exposed disparities in health, nutrition, technology, and housing experienced by many Worcester Public Schools families. All of these disparities negatively impact learning and equity in our district. One bright note was that Worcester Together brought our nonprofit community and public entities together to collaborate on alleviating some of these disparities. My hope is that we can use this model of strong community partnerships to support our education system, meet students’ social and emotional needs, and expand access to technology and the arts.”
Tracy O'Connell Novick
“What I found most discouraging was how much the pandemic reconfirmed how inequitable our society is and how resistant we are to big changes that would work to fix that. How safe families could afford to be, how much access students had to educational support, how fragile children’s relative security was all was so depended on how much money and structural support they and their families had before the pandemic. I wish that I saw more interest in making changes to shift that. I found very encouraging how much our school communities, and our larger community, wanted to make things work for kids, and not simply for education. People pushed hard on food access, on health access, on technology. Teachers and other staff worked to flip all that they knew about education into accessible formats. There was a significant amount of pulling together to make things work better for kids.”
Molly O. McCullough
“Some of the most encouraging things were the ability to utilize technology to adapt, the sense of community and coming together within schools and the community at large. Teachers, students, and families all worked hard to make this unprecedented time and type of learning work. Community members and organizations quickly banded together to raise funds for Chrome books, organized centers to provide pod learning and we saw parents and neighbors work together to create their own pods. Another encouraging area was our nutrition department and our ability to feed children continuously during remote learning.
Some of the concerning aspects are the social emotional needs of students and how those have really come to the forefront. The pandemic exposed the need for more resources in this area, more PD for all staff on this type of learning. And while use of technology was a positive, the pandemic highlighted the inequitable access to internet across the district and the need within the district to keep up with technology. Not everyone had the same ability to navigate through home learning. Many of our students have parents who were essential workers and creating pods or having family members who could provide the supports at home wasn’t always an option. Having a larger district also made planning to get back into a hybrid setting more challenging.”
Shanel Soucy
Waiting for response from the candidate.
