Students across Chatham County finish their school years — perhaps the most unique they’ll ever have — this week, and while some things remained the same, the COVID-19 pandemic threw a wrench in normal end-of-the-year plans.
No proms. No end-of-year testing. And no graduations. At least, not like normal.
And a lot of uncertainty headed into the next school year.
“A lot is just waiting to get the guidance from the state as far as what will be allowable and what’s not allowable when schools do start,” said Tripp Crayton, principal at Jordan-Matthews High School in Siler City. “There’s just going to be a lot of conversations in our building in ensuring there is social distancing if we come back to campus.”
The weeks heading into summer usually kick off with seniors walking across the stage getting their diplomas, followed by analyzation of data by staff and preparation for the next school year. But with many questions still to be answered — How much remote learning will be needed next school year? Will all students be allowed back in the building at one time? — it’s a game of wait and see.
“We’re just waiting for some guidance,” said Chatham Charter School’s Beth McCullough, who serves as the institution’s executive director of secondary programs and communications. “We have yet to find — between attorneys and DPI [state Dept. of Public Instruction] — complete clarity on what the intent is and what it will look like.”
Finishing up secondary education
Graduation exercises are still planned, but schools are handling them a little differently. Chatham Charter pushed its commencement ceremony back to Saturday, July 18, after getting feedback from students and parents. McCullough said it was “really important to the students to be there as a group,” and “they chose to wait with us.”
Most of the other schools in the county are doing something like a “drive-thru” graduation.
Jordan-Matthews’ ceremony will work like this: A student will come with family at a designated time on Saturday, based on last name, and have a five-minute “individualized graduation experience,” Crayton said. The student and family will come to the front of the school in a vehicle and give a teacher the name of the student on a card. That staffer will radio or text the name to the main stage, and the car will drive to the front of the school where the stage will be set up. The student will exit the vehicle and receive their diploma while crossing the stage as their name is called. (No handshakes, though.) The student will then be photographed by a LifeTouch photographer and receive a free 8x10 photo. Families will also have the opportunity to take a photo at that time. A videographer will be taping the whole ceremony and edit together a full video of the event.
J-M is still planning an August 1 event, but in case some students aren’t available then, this set-up makes it possible for everyone to have their special moment.
“We’re trying to make do with what we have,” Crayton said. “We felt like this was the best way for kids to still get their chance to walk across the stage if they couldn’t make August 1 or we couldn’t do August 1 at all.”
Woods Charter School in Chapel Hill will be doing something similar on Saturday, with students coming at specific times based on last names. Chatham Central High School in Bear Creek will follow a similar pattern on Friday, but students and up to five guests will instead enter the school’s auditorium.
“It gives each of our students the opportunity to walk across the stage, which is important,” said Karla Eanes, principal at Chatham Central. “Some of our students will go right into the word of work, so I’m excited that we were able to set things up.”
Reflecting on remote learning
Getting students to this point of the end of the year with no in-class instruction has been a challenge that, according to county education leaders, many teachers and students have stepped up and met.
“I think we’ve been fairly successful with it,” said Crayton. “The kids who still want to learn and still want to pull their grades up have stayed with it.”
He said that his students face a particular challenge than the other county public high schools, Chatham Central and Northwood in Pittsboro. Many students have family members working in the Mountaire Farms poultry processing plant just minutes from the Jordan-Matthews campus, and the plant has been the site of dozens of confirmed COVID-19 cases. With that situation and other jobs lost due to closures, Crayton said, more J-M students have been working in fast food “than ever before” in Siler City.
There have also been some students, he said, that more or less checked out when the state announced grades on March 13 would be the final grade for the semester. But, he said, he believes “it’s worked about as well as we can make it work with the circumstances we’re under.”
McCullough said she was “relieved” that remote instruction “went as well as it did,” and that some staff “did amazing things that they would have not done had they been in that regular setting.” Additionally, she said, many students and families “hung in there and did what they had to do to be successful.”
“They worked with us and never blamed us,” she said. “I never felt like the school was blamed for the situation. Everybody rose to the challenge in that sense.”
Eanes said Chatham Central faced many challenges related to internet connection and access to resources, saying that “down in Bear Creek, it’s hard to even get a cell signal.” But the school’s foundational use of online learning made the transition easier for those who had access.
“We did a lot of blended learning, that’s just how we do school,” she said. “That was just a godsend. Our teachers and students had had that experience, so it really made the transition run very smoothly.”
What’s next
But once all the diplomas have been handed out and tassels have turned, the next step is prepping for next year. And as already stated, there’s some uncertainty.
“You hear about all these various options,” Eanes said, “and one thing that I’ve found is I could sit down and hammer out each option, and then another option would appear.”
Each district and charter school was required to turn in a plan for approaching next year’s education by the end of this week. The state government has mandated an August 17 start date and accounting for at least five days of remote learning in the schedule for the 2020-2021 school year. While some of the mandates will be applicable to all schools, others will have individualized decisions to make.
Jordan-Matthews, for example, will have more than 900 students in its halls next year. How will social distancing look in that? How will lunchtime operate? And if remote learning continues through the fall semester, what role does grading and accountability play?
“There’s just going to be a lot of conversations in our building in ensuring there is social distancing if we come back to campus,” Crayton said. “Should be one of the most interesting summers I’ve had.”
McCullough said one of her concerns was how Chatham Charter’s students and staff are handling the changes emotionally.
“I’ll be frank,” she said. “I’m concerned about morale of students and staff and families going into whatever next year looks like, the longevity of the strains for everyone, are key things for us this summer. To make sure that our staff are well-equipped for however education is adapting, because I really feel like only if the staff are in a good place that then the students will be able to be in a good place. That’s where a lot of our focus is this summer — what do our staff need to be able to move forward?”
These are questions all school administration, faculty and staff will be wrestling with this summer, perhaps the most unique of their careers.
Reporter Zachary Horner can be reached at zhorner@chathamnr.com or on Twitter at @ZachHornerCNR.