Morgan Road Elementary Moves to Five Days of In-Person Instruction Morgan Road Elementary Moves to Five Days of In-Person Instruction

LIVERPOOL, N.Y. (NCC News) – For the first time since March of 2020, Morgan Road Elementary School is back to a full schedule of five days of in-person learning per week.

“It was a crazy first couple of days,” said Morgan Road Elementary School counselor Anna Cusimano. “It’s sort of like starting the school year all over again in April for a lot of these kids.”

This is a big adjustment for small children to make, some of whom have never had a normal year of elementary school. 

“The school counselors have done a lot with contacting parents and doing virtual conversations and meetings with kids,” Cusimano said. “We had a couple students that came and physically toured the building just to get themselves to feel the energy and the tone and climate of being in a school again.”

The district and school have been working on this plan since the fall of 2020, but the CDC recommendation allowing children to be three feet apart with masks made the plan possible.

“That was really a huge thing for us because at six feet, we are not able to fit all of our students in our classrooms and on our school busses in a safe manner,” said former Morgan Road Elementary principal Brett Woodcock. 

Woodcock is now the Interim Executive Director of Curriculum for Mass Science and Technology at the district level. He had been the principal since 2012 and has been with the Liverpool Central School District the past 19 years.

“That change to three feet and wearing masks was probably the biggest thing that made it possible, but the discussions were certainly in place so that when the guidance changed, we were ready to go,” Woodcock said.

According to Woodcock, 94% of students are back to fully in-person learning while the remaining 6% have elected to stay completely virtual at home. Prior to this week, most students learning in person would only come in twice a week with three days of virtual learning. A select group of special education students would also come in four days a week. Now they are full-time students again, but that is also an adjustment.

“One of my concerns, in particular, with the younger students, kindergarten and first graders, has been their stamina,” said Morgan Road Elementary teacher Marjorie Carpenter, who works with students who fall behind in their reading comprehension. “They haven’t been in school five days a week, full days… in their lifetime some of them.”

Students are not the only ones dealing with a chaotic and uncertain school year.

“Teachers are tired,” Carpenter said. “We’ve had to deal with a lot of schedule changes throughout the year, we’ve had to pivot continually throughout the school year, so we’re tired.”

Carpenter has made it work in part due to her experience. She has been an educator for more than 25 years. She has been with Morgan Road Elementary for a decade and a half, but with all of the uncertainty that comes with a pandemic, she has learned from her time teaching virtually.

“I did find, surprisingly, that some of the remote teaching, especially if it was one on one, was, I guess I’d say, as effective,” Carpenter said. “This new way of teaching afforded us the ability to spend a little more time individually with students. I think that is highly effective.” 

Despite that, Carpenter said she did not see her students as often during the hybrid and virtual models.

Over 90% of the staff at school are also vaccinated which “lowered everyone’s anxiety about opening up,” Woodcock said.

“I think that knowing that most educators are being vaccinated has just offered another layer of safety and another layer of comfort,” Cusimano said.