Superintendent Overton is pleased with community support
Coming off the heels of a year riddled with changes, uncertainties, cancellations, and much more, Cordell Public Schools managed to have a much better year that was closer to normal according to
superintendent Brad Overton.
Throughout the year, Cordell Schools has made efforts to keep its students safe since the start of the pandemic, and although this unprecedented event was a surprise, Cordell Schools was already somewhat prepared.
“Cordell Schools has been a one-to-one district for several years, especially with the junior high and high school. So our grades seventh through twelfth, all those students already had a Chromebook,” Overton said. “Moving to virtual was a challenge, but in the junior high and high school, we were steps ahead of a lot of people because of the technology that we had in place.”
These Chromebooks allowed for teachers to deliver their assignments electronically, and while these were only available to high school and some middle school and elementary students, teachers still managed to deliver paper packets to their younger students.
The first two months of the pandemic, also the last two months of the 2020 school year, allowed for the faculty and students to get a grasp of what this current school year would be like.
Finding the best ways to sanitize rooms, how to properly distance their students, setting up a plan for students to have access to lunches, recommending masks, and allowing their teachers to have a say in how their teaching would be done, are just some of the precautions that have been taken over the past year.
“We’ve got good staff here and we’ve got good teachers and they just kind of jumped on board, did their job, and did what they were supposed to do and went above and beyond,” Overton said. “Then as you move on into this school year the challenges weren’t over and our teachers were ready to go.”
This year, Overton said that COVID has been almost nonexistent at the schools since the first week of February.
Throughout the year, faculty and staff have been encouraged to take precautions that they think are necessary on top of those that they must already have in place such as having the teachers wipe down rooms after a class or having cafeteria staff wear masks and gloves when cooking and serving meals.
“There’s a different level of how people reacted, but in the end, it’s all worked out and we’ve had a pretty good school year,” Overton said. “It was important to us to work hard, and I think our community has supported us well in this.”
In August, parents were given the option to have their child partake in a fully virtual, in-person, or blended model of schooling, and while some parents took advantage of all three models, most parents opted to have their children do in-person learning, a move that Overton agrees is the best.
“I’d say there’s a small percentage of students who can truly be successful at [virtual learning]. It’s got to be a student who’s self-motivated, who wants to work hard, and wants to get their work done,” Overton said.
According to Overton, Cordell Schools saw a decrease in the amount of productivity from some virtual students as well as some struggle from them.
“My opinion is that this pandemic has shown us that there’s nothing like that teacher in the classroom, that face-to-face contact, and that face-to-face relationship that a student gets from a teacher,” Overton said.
This struggle may be reflected in students’ upcoming state testing, as Overton thinks this year’s results may be an unfair assessment of what the students learned.
“We want them to learn what they’re supposed to learn, but there’s so much more important things this year. And yes, learning is our job. That’s what we need to focus on the most and that’s what we do,” Overton said. “But there’s a lot of our kids that needed an arm around them this year and needed a hug. They needed a “hold your head up, everything’s going to be alright.” They needed that more than scoring a little bit better on a state test.”
While this year, Overton believes that more students will fail classes than they normally have in the past, summer school classes are going to be offered to help those who need to catch up.
“In three or four weeks you can’t catch up for a whole school year that was just kind of messed up,” Overton said. “But we’re going to do the best we can to provide more for our kids so that they’re ready for next year. So that lets them come back in August and be ready for a normal school year.”
While this school year has yet to end, Overton is hopeful for upcoming events such as award assemblies, band concerts, and graduation to be able to play out normally, as he said that events like this will have no restriction in place.
In the end, Overton agreed that this year was not all bad, as they were able to play a full basketball season as well as give the students as much normalcy as they could.
“The pandemic was spreading pretty good and we played almost a full basketball schedule. So that means our kids took care of themselves and did what they’re supposed to do and their parents did and our faculty and staff did,” Overton said. “Probably the biggest one is that we just tried to make life as normal as possible for them.”
Looking ahead to the beginning of the next school year, Overton has hope that things for the students will have returned to normal by next August.
“Our hope is that next year’s a normal school year and that we’re getting back to life as normal- as close as we can to be back to normal,” Overton said. “I know our community hasn’t agreed with everything that we did, but they supported us, worked with us, and helped us. We can’t get by without our community being supportive.”