East Texas Schools grapple with academic challenges presented by COVID
CARTHAGE, Tx– It’s no secret COVID significantly impacted schools. Between lost instructional time, modified teaching guidelines to uphold safety standards, and the adjustment to online learning, the pandemic challenged schools in more ways than imaginable.
East Texas schools were no exception to the stressors COVID presented. Like all schools, Carthage and Hallsville Independent School Districts have taken measures to protect students and staff, while keeping COVID infection numbers as low as possible.
They ran into their fair share of challenges, many of which started back in March. Jeff Collum, Superintendent for Hallsville ISD says, “We had to do a lot of pivot and shift with lunches, and meals, and academic services delivery.”
To tackle the pandemic, east Texas schools prioritized parent education. Assistant Superintendent for Carthage ISD, Donna Porter says, “Parents will call in. They have a lot of questions and we’ve been trained to help them understand what COVID is and how we’re helping them help their kids.”
At Hallsville ISD, changes at the end of the 2019-2020 academic year were an eye opener. It spotlighted the district’s need for technology, so much so that they had to shut down at one point to ensure all students were equipped to succeed virtually since they required more tablets for students to work from. Collum also says Hallsville faced the same challenge all schools faced nationally when it comes to educating students in a pandemic. He states, “Now you’ve got a continual in-flow and out-flow of students on different timelines and then they’re at home for 10 to 14 days and then they’re back. Then you have another group that comes in and comes back.”
Despite implementing every safety precautions, east Texas schools still saw COVID cases. Back in January, Collum says since August, Hallsville has had 57 staff members…and around one hundred students test positive for COVID-19. That doesn’t take into account the number of students who had to be quarantined. Even with Hallsville’s positivity rate, that’s still less than 1% of their staff total and 2% of their student population.
At Carthage ISD, Assistant Superintendent Porter says,” For this school year, before December and when school started, we had 67 positive cases with the teachers, faculty, staff and the kids. And we had, one thing that was really big was the 522 students we had quarantined.” Although challenging, Porter said there was a major benefit in quarantining over 500 students to better reduce the COVID count in the future.
This article originally ran on ktbs.com.
