14
COURIER LIFE, APRIL 1-7, 2022
BY ISABEL SONG BEER
March 15 marked the
two-year anniversary of
when the New York City
public school system shut
down due to the COVID-19
pandemic. Since then,
school as we know it has
completely changed with
leaders implementing remote
learning as well as
mask and vaccine mandates
once schools reopened.
As the anniversary
drew near, charter school
leaders reflected on the
herculean struggles of
maintaining functioning
educational centers that
continued to challenge and
teach while still ensuring
the safety of students and
faculty.
“We were the first
New York City elementary
schools to reopen
our doors in person, fulltime,
five days a week in
August 2020,” said Emily
Kim, founder and CEO of
Zeta Charter Schools. “We
ran our full-time in person
school model as well
as a full-time remote model
to accommodate families
who really needed us to
open. So that included children
with special needs,
English Language Learners
(ELL) and children of
essential workers.”
Schools had shifted to a
remote learning model on
March 23, 2020 and it was
important to accommodate
the needs of guardians as
well as students, Kim said,
because not everyone had
the immediate availability
of safe, reliable and affordable
childcare. It was also
important to ensure trust
between school administrators
and families during
such a tumultuous time.
“All of us were just in
a state of fear and not fully
understanding what was going
to happen and what the
future held, and there were
no vaccines on the horizon
at that time,” said Kim. “We
really had to spend a lot of
time deepening the relationships
we had with our families
and also communicating
at a very high level with
a lot of transparency with
our staff.”
However, by November
of 2020 schools were
forced to shut down and
adopt the remote learning
model once again after just
8-weeks of instruction due
to a rise of cases.
“There’s the lesson of
obviously being prepared
for anything and being
flexible and I think it certainly
showed the genius of
Two years into the pandemic, charter school leaders are looking back.. Getty Images
the charter model whereby
these groups could make
decisions quickly and act
with great agility in the
face of ever-changing circumstances,”
said James
Merriman, CEO of the New
York City Charter Center.
“Everyone learned that
the schools that had built
strong relationships with
their communities were
much more able to use that
trust to ensure that parents
were ready to help out with
remote learning.”
Now two years down
the road with the mandatory
mask mandate lifted
in New York schools, educational
leaders have a
much better understanding
of how to quickly adapt
and effectively educate
their students regardless
of dire circumstances like
possible future variants or
other emergencies.
“We have to be able
to manage COVID,” Kim
said. “Schools are managing
every manner of
illness every single day.
I think we’ve reached
a point where we know
how to manage COVID. If
there were an outbreak we
would certainly require
masking, and we can act
very nimbly. There’s still
fear and trepidation, but I
think also Omicron taught
us that we can deal with
another variant. We now
know what to do.”
Health
Education
Charter school leaders look
back on two years of COVID
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