K-12 schools welcome return to normalcy as classes begin

This week, across the county, K-12 schools are celebrating the start of the new academic year and, with it, the expectation of a much more predictable, consistent school year compared to recent years. While plenty are still facing lingering staffing challenges, sources expressed an overall optimism for what’s to come.

Similarly to area college leaders (tinyurl.com/2zor25p9), K-12 administrators and staff were glad to see the recent lessening of COVID-19 quarantine requirements from the CDC earlier this year (tinyurl.com/2ow9yr6b). Sources interviewed expressed that those changes will make things considerably easier for their operations.

“It’s been so nice this summer not having to literally try to figure out where we’re going to put kids for lunch, how are we going to get kids to and from places, can we let adults in the building, can we have extenuated programs that were helping us in the past that we’ve had to not have for over two years?” said Eric Hartz, superintendent of Newfield Central School District (newfieldschools.org). “I’m really hoping we can get back to some consistency in education so our kids are getting what they need and we’re not broken up with virtual days.”

Jeanie Day, principal at Trumansburg Elementary School (tburgschools.org/page/elementary-home), also expressed a sense of relief among staff.

“We were hoping that we would be able to go back to some more typical things in our building, like eating in the cafeteria, and I’m happy to share that we have been able to do that,” she said. “We will be able to welcome volunteers back and have people in the building. So, I was worried that that might change. But as of right now, we are able to do those things that we were planning.”

Tina Nelson-Hodges, principal at New Roots Charter School (newrootsschool.org), said that, as the year goes on, she’s expecting health concerns to continue to be lower than previous years during the pandemic.

“We are confident that members of our school community will continue to prioritize the safety of themselves and others,” she said in an email. “When the mask mandate was lifted, our students and staff developed working agreements that demonstrate respect for the wide range of perspectives and needs in our school community so that everyone can feel safe, both emotionally and physically.”

Area districts are also celebrating other recent improvements, including large amounts of technology upgrades thanks to funds provided by the Ithaca Public Education Initiative (IPEI). According to a press release (tinyurl.com/2hhpbr3a), Antares Capital recently worked with IPEI to donate 1,000 new HD monitors to Dryden, Groton, Newfield and Trumansburg school districts. Per the release, Ithaca and Lansing were left out because they expressed that they aren’t in need at this time.

“We, because of that donation, were able to cycle out a large portion of our monitors for newer, updated ones,” said Joshua Bacigalupi, superintendent of Dryden Central School District (dryden.k12.ny.us).

Bacigalupi highlighted other ways community organizations have helped his district ahead of the 2022-23 academic year.

“We’ve also benefited from the Cornell Elves, who donate book bags and school supplies to our district, primarily for our elementary school students,” he said. “We’ve benefited from Community Faith Partnership Group, which is an interfaith group of churches that does small repairs for community homes, and they work with our social workers here to identify families that would benefit from that. We’ve also benefited from BorgWarner this summer, who’s done a lot to donate books to our library and to the individual schools.”

Though sources remain excited for this year, they acknowledged that their districts and others are still facing staffing shortages, which Tompkins Weekly has discussed before.

“Staffing is a challenge for us and others in our industry as well,” said Luvelle Brown, superintendent of Ithaca City School District (ithacacityschools.org), in an email. “Kudos to our administrators and teacher-leaders for their many efforts over the summer to recruit and mitigate an issue that is plaguing the nation and us here locally as well.”

Jeffrey Matteson, superintendent at TST BOCES (tstboces.org), shared a similar sentiment.

“We’re still trying to fill some spots down the stretch, especially frontline staff who work directly with students, teaching assistants,” he said. “We’ll continue to recruit until we have every position filled. … If we do have any illness problems, that puts every program at risk of having to have temporary closures. We got through last year with the minimum staffing levels, so we anticipate we can this year, but it is the biggest challenge of the year. And we don’t anticipate it being a quick remedy because there’s lots of jobs out there and people have options.”

Newfield is facing its own staffing difficulties, coupled with budget challenges leading to significant cost-cutting measures (tinyurl.com/2zylzwtn).

“Our economic status is better, but we’re not still where we’d like to be,” Hartz said. “So, every time a position [opens] when somebody leaves and it’s something new, we evaluate it. And we’ve made a very difficult decision to not post a social worker position [where] the person resigned just a week ago. We think we can restructure what we have with counselors and social workers and psychologists here. And we’re working real hard with our leadership team to make sure that our students get their needs met.”

Addressing staffing issues will be an ongoing process, as Bacigalupi explained.

“[We’re] finishing negotiating a contract with our teachers union in which teachers, if they’re asked to cover for classes, will be paid an additional amount of money per period for what they’re asked to cover during their planning time or other duty times,” he said. “And then last year, in terms of bus drivers, we had negotiated a municipality agreement with the Groton Central School District in that if we needed help covering runs that they would assist us if possible, and that we would do that service … [for] them to if they needed that.”

Even with these challenges, sources are looking forward to what’s to come.

“We’re anticipating a great fall, a great start,” Matteson said. “We’re excited to get all the students back and get our schools going again and have a wonderful fall season of good student learning and student activities and hopefully health as well.”

District leaders said they’ve seen almost universal excitement from families as well.

“Folks are eager to begin an academic year without the huge unknowns, anticipated disruptions to learning and all the other health-related struggles that we have navigated the past few years,” Brown said.

Day said she’s received similar feedback.

“I’m not hearing as much nervousness about being around people as I did last year when we were trying to plan events,” she said. “So, I think people are just really excited to get back to school and be involved in what’s happening here.”

Michael Mazza, director of community engagement at New Roots, said students have also shared plenty of excitement.

“Our students are very creative and community-minded and are eager to embrace all of the new and returning opportunities for arts and music programming, culminating in our Rootstock youth music festival in May 2023!” he said in an email. “We also look forward to the many opportunities we have traditionally had to engage with the urban core of businesses, events and organizations that are our neighbors.”

Jessica Wickham is the managing editor of Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to them at editorial@VizellaMedia.com.