Pandemic lesson: Closing schools for so long was a huge mistake

 

This column about the pandemic-related hardships that the Class of 2022 at area high schools faced due to the coronavirus pandemic appeared in The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, MA on Monday, June 13.
While covering one of those graduations, King Philip Regional High School in Wrentham, MA held at Stonehill College in Easton, it was easy to feel good about the students about to graduate, because they had clearly surmounted a number of obstacles put in place by the sudden shutdown of schools in March of 2020, their sophomore year.
In hindsight, it seems obvious that schools in Massachusetts and across the country shouldn’t have remained all virtual for so many months; to do so was a huge disservice to the students’ education.

The link to this column on The Sun Chronicle’s website follows: https://www.thesunchronicle.com/opinion/columns/larry-kessler-heres-to-you-class-of-2022/article_0dcb9147-063e-5c78-9d35-e23a579d59eb.html
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Graduations have always been a cause for celebration, but the Class of 2022 can be excused for feeling especially jubilant because of what they’ve endured over the last nearly 2 ½ years.
Speakers at all of the high school graduations held over the past few weeks in the Attleboro area referenced the coronavirus pandemic and the hardships that the shutdown of schools in March 2020 caused them, and who could blame them?
The abrupt, long-term closing of schools across Massachusetts in the early days of the pandemic caused unprecedented challenges and setbacks to students, and it’s clear that they’ll be experiencing the consequences of the closing of schools for a long time.
Typical of the remarks at graduations was this comment by North Attleboro High School salutatorian Krithika Mood.
“We lost half our sophomore year to COVID, and hybrid or remote learning defined our junior year. Our normal way of living came to a screeching halt; however, the support from our families, friends, teachers and administration gave us the courage to make the best of what we had. Because of that courage, our senior year has been extraordinary,” she told her fellow graduates last Friday night at Community Field in North Attleboro.
Mood is right: many students proved incredibly resilient as they dealt with a series of pandemic-induced educational hardships: extended remote learning; a hybrid schedule for most of the 2020-21 year; no sports for a while, followed by playing sports with new rules and  seasons; no extracurricular activities such as band; the lack of social relationships; and the total absence of the personal touch in teaching.
Outside of school settings, even when they did return part time to their classrooms, they were strongly discouraged from hanging out with their friends, lest they incur the wrath of officials more concerned about the sanctity of government regulations and COVID-19 metrics than with individuals’ well-being.
That’s why I’d argue that a prolonged shutdown of schools during the pandemic wasn’t the proper course. Indeed, in a story by correspondent Jordyn Forte (The Sun Chronicle, Thursday, June 2), area seniors’ comments underscored just how harmful the shutdown was to them.
Attleboro High School graduate Emelia Westwater put the shutdown’s effect on students in perspective: “I also think that for all of us, the pandemic definitely had an impact on our abilities to see the schools we were interested in and take the classes needed in order to show the schools that we were capable of admission. But one thing that the pandemic has taught us is that everything can change in an instant, and I think that we know that now more than ever.”
Another member of the Class of 2022, Norton High School’s Zoe Duran, addressed the detrimental aspects of the shift to online learning.
“My senior year greatly improved from an educational standpoint, as well as from a social standpoint. I found it difficult to truly learn online, and there were so many restrictions on seeing people outside of your own household,” she lamented.
Thankfully, she and her fellow seniors regained a taste of what passes for normalcy these days when she returned to her senior year under far fewer COVID-imposed restrictions, except for the state’s school mask mandate, which wasn’t lifted until Feb. 28.
“I was able to easily communicate with my teachers and see friends during my senior year,” she said, adding that social outings such as a harbor cruise in Boston returned.
Such social interactions were completely devalued by state school and health officials, whom I believe paid lip service to the mental health issues faced by students and residents of all ages who were locked down for months.
That’s why I firmly believe that in a decade or so --- or whenever the history of the COVID-19 pandemic is written --- the decision to shut down schools and keep them closed for months before a hybrid model was introduced will be viewed as a colossal error in judgment.
Virtual learning might have kept students somewhat connected to their classrooms, but it was --- and remains --- an extremely poor substitute for in-person education. And when you toss in all of the sports and extracurricular activities that either were canceled or reimagined, the toll on the psyche and spiritual development of students was immense.
The knee-jerk reaction to lock down the state and to close the schools might have been understandable when it first happened, but state officials should have been far more proactive in getting students back in the classroom much quicker, even if it was just on a hybrid basis.
Their failure to do that --- and the extended period of recommended social distancing ---- has taken a toll on all of us. I’m still leery of mingling in crowds due to the extent that my psyche has been scarred by the pandemic and the hundreds of mixed messages from our public health and government leaders.
And if I’m feeling that way, I can only imagine how badly the students were feeling when they had their lives turned upside down.
That’s why I salute the Class of 2022 for surviving the pandemic disruptions that so negatively altered the quality of their education. And I pray that their experience will convince school and government officials to think long and hard before they ever again shut down the schools.
Larry Kessler is a retired Sun Chronicle local news editor and can be reached at larrythek65@gmail.com. He blogs at larrytheklineup.blogspot.com