Wyoming

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Buffalo grazing with mountains in the background

State Demographics

  • Schools
    Total Enrollment 94,258
  • Total Enrollment
    Schools 369
  • Economically Disadvantaged Students
    Economically Disadvantaged Students 37.1%
  • Students with Disabilities
    Students with Disabilities 16.5%
  • English Language Learners
    English Language Learners 3%
  • Students attending Urban Schools
    Students Attending Urban Schools 25%
  • Students attending Rural Schools
    Students Attending Rural Schools 28.9%
  • Graduation Rate
    Graduation Rate 86.2%

Data source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Common Core of Data (CCD). Graduation Rate data are from 2016/17; all other data are from 2017/18.

State Story
District Stories

State Story : March 2020 – April 2021

March 2020

School Closures

Jillian Balow was serving in her second term as Wyoming’s elected State Superintendent when the COVID-19 pandemic forced her and Governor Gordon to announce a sudden closure of all schools in March 2020.

Initial Decisions and Approach
Summary
  • Balanced urgency to act with the need to be thoughtful and strategic
  • Placed decisions in the hands of local leaders.
  • Focused on student well-being and serving the most at-risk kids as a “guiding north star.”
SEA and LEA Role Delineation
Summary
  • Understood that decentralized approaches may take more time but can produce better local results.
  • Opened the pathway for local leaders to make decisions by setting up structures for LEAs to act.
  • LEA autonomy worked well for Balow as “an elected official who serves people not schools.”
Supportive Partners or Resources
Summary
  • The Governor created five task forces that provided key support to K-12 Education.
  • CCSSO and the Hunt-Kean Leadership Fellows provided timely and practical resources and support.
Jillian Balow
Jillian Balow Wyoming Superintendent of Instruction

"[We can] look at decentralized education governance and say, ‘Wow, this is something that we can leverage. There are people who are much smarter than I am in the teeniest, tiniest communities in our state, both in the health care realm and in the education realm, and if we can set up a structure and set up guidance for those groups to work together with their community to make decisions about re-opening safely and understand and be okay with the fact that it's going to look different in every community across the state, then that's the way that we need to go forward.’"

— Jillian Balow , Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction

July 2020

School Re-Opening

The Wyoming Department of Education released their "Smart Start Guidance" in July 2020, developed by a group of Wyoming education and health experts.

Re-opening Approach
Summary
  • Created a blue ribbon panel of health, education, and business professionals to develop the “Smart Start Guidance” re-opening plan.
  • Included four critical areas of guidance: communications; safety and wellness; school operations; and instruction and technology.
  • Focused on three re-opening models: open, hybrid, or closed (remote learning).

"Communities know best how to address their unique challenges. Wyoming schools should be prepared to quickly and efficiently adapt school operations in response to their challenges."

— Jillian Balow , Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction

What Comes Next

Next Steps
Summary
  • Focus on staying the course.
  • Prepare to address eminent budget shortfalls.
  • Build a “New Normal.”

"Opening schools with a really great plan document is the easy part. Keeping schools open with a much deeper plan and continued planning and collaboration is going to be the challenge for all of us."

— Jillian Balow , Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction

August 2020 – December 2020

Re-Opening Plan Implementation

According to Superintendent Balow, most Wyoming schools provided in-person instruction since the start of the 2020-2021 school year. The choice was made by LEAs who followed health metrics and applied virus mitigation practices as needed.

Status of School Models
Summary
  • LEAs chose their models based on local health metrics, with most holding school in-person.
  • The SEA helped schools mitigate COVID-19 spread by providing them guidance, local decision-making authority, and policies that would support their needs.
  • Schools took on new roles, like contact tracing.
  • Parents were offered options for school model choices.
A group of kids stand in a row holding backpacks

"I think especially for state chiefs, we were a bit shell-shocked from everything happening in our states, homes, families, and workplace. I think that was when we realized that this is the disruption that we've been waiting for. We are foolish and naive not to take advantage of what this is; a disruption and opportunity to improve education in ways that we don't yet know."

— Jillian Balow , Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction

"It's not been easy. Contact tracing, [including] the new roles that our school secretaries, nurses, teachers, and principals have taken on has been extraordinary. The partnerships at the local level, with county help, have been extraordinary. Our sports look different. Our classrooms look different. But what doesn't look different is that school remains a really safe place for kids to come and learn."

— Jillian Balow , Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction
Cover of the Wyoming Department of Education Smart Start Guidance

"We, like every other state, have been fearful at times of our local statistics. We've seen staff quarantines, school quarantines, and schools that have moved temporarily to hybrid instruction. That's all driven by local statistics, and it's driven by the reality that we've been able to manage the risk."

— Jillian Balow , Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction

January 2021

Recover and Rebuild

Superintendent Balow believes that local decisionmaking is important as needs across the state can vary by context. When it comes to the pandemic, Balow asserts that priorities in Wyoming schools are similar to other schools across the country; teachers need resources to provide academic, social-emotional, and trauma-based supports to students, students need academic support and acceleration, and the SEA’s role is to provide support and resources to LEAs as needed.

Recover and Rebuild Section Two

Priorities (January 2021)
Summary
  • Focusing on slow, steady, progress brought about by consistent LEA systems and practices.
  • Empowering schools to make decisions based on local data, needs, and capacities.
  • Addressing student learning loss and trauma.
Rethinking Professional Development
Summary
  • Moved to online professional development.
  • Refocused professional development to enhance teacher’s abilities to use instructional technology.
Young afro american woman, female teacher standing near whiteboard during coronavirus pandemic

Recover and Rebuild Section Three

Rethinking Assessment
Summary
  • Committed to measuring the impact of the pandemic on learning.
  • Uncertain what assessment will look like.
  • Interested in how ESSA may provide opportunities for states to rethink assessment for the future.

"As a state chief I have, from day one, said that formative assessments within the classroom are the most important assessment that drive education from day to day. They're the assessments that allow teachers, parents, and students to see their progress from moment to moment, from day to day, and from year to year, and allow teachers, families, and students to make the constant adjustments that ensure the success of the student."

— Jillian Balow , Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction

Recover and Rebuild Section Four

Vaccination Planning
Summary
  • Partnered closely with the Department of Health.
  • Prioritized by local health metrics.
  • Focused on bringing salient stakeholders to the table to contribute to decisions.

"I'm grateful that we have a Health Department that is very capable of making some of those key decisions [about vaccination priorities] and that they include us in the conversation, but do not expect us to be the decisionmakers. This is where I really feel like our community data and our community leaders have an opportunity and ability to step forward."

— Jillian Balow , Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction

April 2021

Planning for Summer and Next Year

Reflecting on In-Person Learning
Summary
  • Schools have been almost 100 percent open since the start of the year.
    • Makes WY focus and needs different than states not open most of the year.
    • Reduced health and safety concerns allowed for focus on assessment and addressing learning loss/acceleration.
  • Took about 6 weeks for the safety routines to feel "normal."
Students returning to school after COVID-19 pandemic. Social distancing during class

"The dust didn't settle around schools reopening and around that new normal until October. It took a good 6 weeks for us to get into a groove to realize that it felt more normal than not for students, for example, to wear masks, have their temperatures taken every day, and to eat in classrooms and not have spectators at sporting activities."

— Jillian Balow , Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction

Planning for Summer and Next Year Two

ARP Challenges
Summary
  • Navigating ARP along with legislative session.
  • Funding decisions were in the hands of the legislators.
  • State budget deficits made budgeting large funds like ARP difficult.

"ARP is a little bit of a game changer because it’s more, and because we have more hands on deck to help prioritize. So that’s been really interesting for all of us to navigate. And for us in Wyoming that ended in a stalemate in our legislature, which has been really unfortunate and is the fault of no one and the fault of everyone. It’s everyone trying to solve really big problems with some immediate funding and others trying to say, 'How do we use this immediate funding to prioritize learning loss and to help set up a path going forward for funding sustainability for schools?'"

— Jillian Balow , Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction

Planning for Summer and Next Year Three

Investing for Transformation and Equity
Summary
  • ARP investment should focus on transforming not only schools but also communities.
  • Community transformation means forming and investing in community partners.

"We need to be a lot more intentional about making transformations in our community. And I’m being really intentional by saying not transformations in our schools, not transformations in education, transformations in our community. Because summer learning, after school learning, social emotional learning, that includes our community partners. Whether that’s YMCA’s Big Brothers Big Sisters, church organizations, our mental health providers, our healthcare, our law enforcement, all of those are involved. This is not just funding for schools."

— Jillian Balow , Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction

District Stories : March 2020 – July 2021

In Wyoming, we spoke with educators in three districts, including two assistant district superintendents and a district superintendent. Interviewees were asked to speak candidly about their own experiences and views, which are not necessarily shared by or representative of the schools and districts in which they serve.

March 2020

Schools Close Suddenly

When schools suddenly closed in March, State Superintendent Jilian Balow was worried about the long-term effects on at-risk students being “pulled from the safest place that many of them know in their lives.” At the district-level, the educators we spoke with shared that they experienced a range of thoughts and feelings, including uncertainty and anxiety relating to the sudden closure of all schools in March 2020.

"As a tourist town, we were one of the first districts that said we’re going to have to shut down. At the time, I thought it would be a couple of weeks."

— District Superintendent

"It was anxiety, because all of the sudden we had to close, and no one knew what that meant or how to do that. Teachers were frantic. People wondered if they were going to get paid, were they going to get fired? And also, what does closing school mean for kids?"

— Assistant District Superintendent
A woman conducts a virtual interview on a laptop

Priorities

To ensure diverse community needs could be met, State Superintendent Balow felt it was the state’s role to provide districts with supports and resources and leave decisions on how to move forward in the hands of each community. The educators we spoke with shared that in the wake of the first school closures, their key priorities centered on making sure that all students had access to the things they’d need to learn remotely. This didn’t just include laptops and internet access though—they were also concerned about how to meet students’ social and emotional needs.

"We ended up making 75–80 paper packets and hand delivering them to homes every week, because kids didn’t have computers or access to the internet. About 30 percent of families struggled to get connected to the internet. We ended up buying Chromebooks for all students and got those delivered by mid-April, and we bought hotspots that we were able to get to every single home."

— Assistant District Superintendent

"We’re fortunate in our district that the message from day one has been that social-emotional learning (SEL) is first, for staff and students. Every school has at least one counselor. We adopted programs in elementary where counselors are giving lessons in classrooms. In middle and high schools, counselors have a lot of groups for students to support them. Twice a week principals are training to learn more about how to support SEL for students and staff."

— Assistant District Superintendent
A young student attends a virtual class on her laptop while another reads a book

Teaching and Learning

Each of the educators we spoke with shared concerns about how kids would continue to have access to high-quality instruction when traditional school was no longer an option. In response to the challenges they faced, they focused instruction on the most important academic standards at each grade level, and even went so far as to get state approval to allow small groups of students to return to school.

"Our biggest concern is equity—how do you make it equitable? How do you make sure all kids have the opportunity to learn and grow? Some kids are just not responding to teacher outreach. It’s devastating to lose touch with kids. It’s hard to get kids motivated. Full time virtual teachers are rarely getting breaks. It feels 24/7 for them. And then they feel like they’re failing kids, and I hate that they feel that way."

— Assistant District Superintendent

"Supporting struggling students is a daily work in progress. Our counselors have been very connected and followed up with missing students or students they were worried about. Students had daily synchronous and asynchronous classes, so if kids were not showing up, counselors reached out to kids repeatedly. We also did some small group instruction; we got county and statewide health officer approval to bring kids on site. We did that for kids we were concerned about, who were falling through the cracks."

— District Superintendent

July 2020

Looking Ahead to a New School Year

In July 2020, the Wyoming Department of Education released “Smart Start Guidance” to support local education agencies in thinking about how they would begin the 2020-21 school year, whether in-person, remote, or hybrid. The state asked districts to consider the implications of reopening in four “focus areas” of communication, safety and wellness, school operations, and instruction and technology.

As they looked forward to summer and the beginning of the next school year in the fall of 2020, the educators we spoke with reflected on what they’ve learned and the challenges that still lie ahead of them in each of these areas of focus. They noted how the shift to remote learning had fundamentally altered the modes in which they communicated with students, perhaps permanently, and discussed the different scenarios that a return to in-person instruction might present.

"We’ve learned so much; we get better every day. We didn’t have a single learning management system, but we do now. We’re learning how to use tools like Zoom and Google Docs effectively, and collaborating with those tools. Instructional technology was a learning process, but once you start doing it, it’s amazing how engaging you can be in a virtual environment."

— Assistant District Superintendent

"We still have high academic expectations, but maybe a dip in achievement is okay. Health and wellness are most important in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. We’ve also over-communicated with families in a variety of ways: blogs, letters, videos, text messages. We communicate what we know and where we are, so people are not having to fill in the blanks themselves.

— District Superintendent

"There is a lot of pressure to open school full time, face-to-face. We just can’t do it, because of the staff. If a staff member has COVID, we wouldn’t have enough staff to keep going if it spreads. If the number of COVID cases go up, who will drive the bus? Which substitute teachers are going to be willing to rotate among buildings where there have been confirmed cases?"

— District Superintendent
A student waves to his teacher on his laptop screen

August 2020

Teaching and Learning in a Pandemic

Like other chief state education officers across the country, Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow was charged with helping Wyoming’s school districts on their path to reopening in the 2020-21 school year. But Wyoming’s decentralized education governance allowed local education agencies a greater degree of autonomy in making reopening decisions.

Given Wyoming’s comparatively low case rates in August 2020, many districts prioritized in-person learning in some form, including hybrid schedules. They continued to offer remote learning options for students who did not yet feel comfortable returning to in-person learning.

A teacher and students sit in a classroom wearing masks

Priorities

As the school year began in districts across Wyoming, the state focused on addressing student trauma and getting students back up to speed after a long summer away. At the district level, the educators we spoke with were focused on student needs, both in terms of social-emotional learning (SEL) and wraparound support.

"A food pantry from our district went up in the summer, and we have a grant from the federal government to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students. We also distributed Friday Food Bags to students—those are prepared through our districts."

— Assistant District Superintendent

"Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, our district has had a new push for SEL. Our school psychologists were quick to jump in on that. Last year they started trying some mindfulness sessions with our students. This year, students in three of our five schools have access to “recharge rooms,” where students have a choice of activities, like yoga or resting in a cozy corner. Students can come individually, and every class has scheduled time once a week."

— Assistant District Superintendent

"We have great community partnerships. Every Wednesday we meet with the district attorney and the counseling center to provide some wraparound support for students who are struggling. If there is an issue with a student or family, we try to bring kids to the table to try to figure out how to support them or their family. It’s been our top priority since March."

— Assistant District Superintendent
A young man places groceries in a bag

Teaching and Learning

Each of the Wyoming education leaders we spoke with talked about the school schedules they leveraged under the Wyoming Department of Education’s Smart Start guidelines to provide a safe option for families who wanted their students to return to school in person. Each of the districts we learned about offered a 2 day per week schedule for middle and high school students, while younger students had the option to attend school every day. Particularly in middle and high school, the hybrid model offered benefits for some students, like positive relationships and higher attendance, but had unintended consequences for others.

"Students in our K-5 grades are in school 5 days a week unless they choose to be home. And we’ve hired virtual teachers for the students who are learning from home. Middle school and high school students can choose a fully virtual option, or come to school on a hybrid A/B schedule for 2 days a week. We’ve noticed that older hybrid students do great when they’re in school, but on virtual days, some don’t even turn their computers on. They don’t really see virtual days as school days."

— Assistant District Superintendent

"High school and middle school students have face-to-face instruction 2 days a week, and if they are not engaging in class, or are falling behind, they can come to school on Fridays, when teachers have small group sessions. The schools also went from a 7 period day to 4 periods. Paring down the number of classes has been a huge help. The new schedule strengthens relationships between students and teachers. Kids want to go to school. They need to be with teachers and peers—they need those relationships. Attendance has been higher, and discipline actions have been virtually nonexistent."

— District Superintendent
A teacher conducts her class outside

Successes

Though internet access had presented challenges for families across the state, in some places, access to fiber internet or wireless hotspots improved just in time for the 2020-21 school year. The educators we spoke with also shared that their districts had leveraged the summertime for professional development designed to build teachers’ skills and confidence related to virtual instruction.

"One improvement is that we got a federal grant for an internet provider to provide fiber internet in the valley [a more remote part of the district]. We also have more hotspots for families."

— Assistant District Superintendent

"We did a great job of preparing teachers for this school year. We spent the summer developing professional development around effective and engaging online instruction. We paid teachers for three extra days in August, with those being intensive training days with online strategies. Teachers were stressed when they showed up, but they felt better after the training."

— Assistant District Superintendent

"We met with some teachers over the summer and benchmarked priority academic standards, so parents and students could see those standards, and so teachers could make sure their assignments are aligned to those standards. So teachers will probably be more prepared if we have to go back to virtual instruction."

— Assistant District Superintendent
Two teachers sit and converse with eachother

Challenges

The educators we spoke with shared a range of concerns, from their ability to measure the impact of interrupted instruction on student learning to the stress of returning to school in person.

As the winter months began, rising numbers of cases of COVID-19 also concerned them, as high rates of infection forced them to develop contingency plans for potentially reclosing schools.

"Two of the biggest stresses we’ve experienced are “Are we going to have the state test?” and “If so, how do we account for gaps, and get kids where they need to be?” It’s stressful for teachers. We’ve been continuing district assessments, and I hope we do have a state annual assessment to keep a finger on what students can do."

— Assistant District Superintendent

"Current rates of COVID infection are high. We meet with our county health officer—he’s responsive, and he’s a pediatrician. And we have a monthly board meeting where we set aside time to have a conversation around reclosing. It’s harder to open back up than to reclose, and we have contingency plans if we need to do that."

— Assistant District Superintendent

"We’re in constant communication about cases. We had no community spread, and now we’re the highest in the state. Our school system is demanding masks, 6 feet of distancing, with lots of PPE and sanitation. But in the last week, we’ve had so many staff out with COVID-19, or exposure to it. We’ve had to talk about how long we can sustain teaching without teachers."

— Assistant District Superintendent

December 2020

What Comes Next for Districts?

As educators looked ahead to the second half of the 2020-21 school year, they spoke about COVID-19 fatigue, stress, and the need to continue offering individualized support for students and their families.

"I’ve visited all of our schools. Everyone is masked all day long. It’s hard to confer with kids. It’s hard if kids don’t want to wear their masks. For everyone, morale is high, but stress is also high."

— Assistant District Superintendent

"Part of our district’s core values is resilience and perseverance, and we’ve focused on that now more than ever. We’ve partnered with the community to offer onsite counseling for years. We actively teach yoga, mental health awareness, and mindfulness. Wyoming has a high suicide rate in general, and we’ve been fortunate not to have a student suicide this year, but that’s a bad measure [of student resilience]. We have kids in need. Kids are really hurting. We all want this to be over. There is an element of fear and also of COVID fatigue. We are actively talking to kids and reaching out to see what they need, and tailoring our services to meet those needs."

— District Superintendent
A group of students sit in a classroom while wearing masks

January 2021

The Path to Recovery

Under Superintendent Jillian Balow, Wyoming schools were able to preserve in-person instruction—with masks, physical distancing, and improved ventilation in school buildings—for the entire 2020-21 school year. The state issued guidance to school districts around transportation, class schedules, and COVID testing that would make in-person instruction feasible.

Though students were able to attend classes in-person throughout, the school year was still highly unusual. District superintendents that we interviewed commented that their educator workforce was unusually fatigued by the end of the school year. With summer programming usually scheduled to start immediately following the end of the traditional school year, one school district contracted with a local university to bring in tutors and coordinate literacy programming in early summer 2021, allowing its full-time educators to get some rest.

"One of the challenges is getting teachers to work. They’re tired. This year has really taken a toll on people…we’ve really had to invite and urge teachers to be summer school teachers, and you know, they really just need a break. So we structured it a little bit differently, and we’re starting in a couple of weeks just to give people that break."

— Superintendent

"Usually our teachers are big summer school people, they love to teach summer school, they love to get in there. But this year, they just weren’t interested."

— Assistant Superintendent
Woman learning and teaching homeschooling in video conference from home

Reopening and Reemerging

Superintendents we interviewed in summer 2021 observed that in-school mask mandates and other health and safety precautions significantly lowered the incidence not only of COVID-19 but other common illnesses as well. They anticipated that some academic interventions would continue into the 2021-22 school year as part of an extended recovery process. They noted that while many school buildings were open, some students—especially high school students—remained fully remote or in hybrid learning.

By summer, educators had just begun to dig into student-level data to assess if there were any gaps that had opened up; early returns were mixed, but they anticipated there would be a greater need for supports in math compared to ELA, as well as credit recovery opportunities across subjects at the high school level.

"We also learned that [by] wearing masks and taking these precautions, our numbers of kids who had flu, pneumonia, strep throat, all the normal illnesses we have were hardly even happening. So [the precautions] worked, and they enabled us to stay in session as much as they were. So I feel like it was money well spent."

— Superintendent

"The principals are going to be doing a lot of work this summer to go through the data that we have on individual students, [and] we know we’ve got some pockets where kids did really well...we’re really trying to beef up some of the [supports] for individual students to make sure that they’re really getting what they need."

— Superintendent

"Our language arts and reading areas were still right…where they usually are, and actually had some great increases in 6th grade and 10th grade language arts, they just knocked it out of the park. Math, we did see some learning loss in those areas. 3rd grade math, especially fractions, that was a big dip for us."

— Assistant Superintendent

"I think everyday instruction was so critical…a lot of [high schoolers], those [hybrid] off days were off days. They didn’t take those as ‘oh, I’m supposed to actually get online and do some work,’ they took it as ‘oh, this is my vacation day.’ So we have a lot of credit recovery to do at the high school level."

— Assistant Superintendent

The American Rescue Plan

Superintendent Balow and district superintendents we interviewed said that the Wyoming Legislature had taken a more active role in weighing in on how to best spend ARP funding controlled by the state than previous rounds of education relief funding, in alignment with spending needs and priorities in other parts of the state budget. But a July special legislative session to discuss how to align the use of those relief funds was cancelled, postponing further legislative deliberation until the end of 2021 at the earliest.

In Wyoming, ARP funds arrived in the midst of a $300 million statewide K-12 revenue shortfall related to the disruption caused by COVID-19 and a years-long downturn in Wyoming’s coal and gas extraction industry, historically a major source of revenue for the state. In April, the Wyoming Legislature adjourned its session without agreement on how to resolve the deficit.

Wyoming district leaders detailed a need to use relief funds to cover significantly increased utility and operating costs associated with running air filtration systems and keeping windows open in winter. They described a need to use relief funds to continue to invest in personal protective equipment for teachers and students within the school building.

"We opened up all our vents and windows when we could and so our utility bills are like three times what they normally are…it’s very cold in Wyoming, and leaving our vents open 24/7 and running those filters 24/7 is expensive."

— Superintendent

"One of our biggest expenses will be for HVAC systems, to make sure that our air quality is consistent with CDC regulations…I went to [our] middle school, it’s about 50-some years old, no air conditioning, not a lot of ventilation, most of the rooms don’t even have windows…so we need some major overhaul on our systems."

— Assistant Superintendent

"Filters in classrooms, masks, and sanitizer. We had to have more staff so we could spread students out, we had to rethink how we do lunch [in] tents outside…and we had more custodial staff helping us with the deep cleaning."

— Superintendent
Woman in protective medical mask isolated against empty school corridor

July 2021

Lessons for the Future

In Wyoming, our interviewees anticipated that a few major changes would carry forward from the 2020-21 school year, including the flexibility that remote learning could be provided where needed. They described a desire to hold onto scheduling changes and other modifications to the school day that teachers and students enjoyed.

"I do think remote instruction is a 21st century skill that our kids need to have. That needs to continue, which is why we’re continuing with some pieces of it."

— Superintendent

"Some of the adjustments that we had to make with start times and distancing, some of the teachers found that they really liked some of those changes…we’re keeping those start time changes, keeping some of the classroom lunches instead of going to a cafeteria, keeping some of those morning meetings where kids get a chance to just kind of decompress a little bit before they get into the instruction."

— Assistant Superintendent
Portrait of a schoolboy wearing face mask studying in the classroom

Lessons for the Future Two

Above all, the superintendents we spoke with said that it was crucially important to continue to invest in interpersonal relationships as a foundation for a full recovery. They said they did not want to lose sight of the COVID-19 pandemic’s devastating impact and the life-altering effect it had on some families.

"It’s all about the people in the buildings. The academics, we’ll get there, we’ll figure that out…we have been through a difficult year. Depending on how you handled it, it may not have been a big deal to you, but for some people, it was a huge trauma."

— Assistant Superintendent

"We have to continue to invest in these relationships and in the social and emotional health of our students and staff. And it’s not like it wasn’t a huge priority to me [before], but it’s even more of a priority now than ever."

— Superintendent

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