HARLINGEN — They’re back — by popular demand.
Kids are once again flooding the classrooms of the Harlingen school district after a year and a half of pandemic-imposed isolation; teachers and administrators are primed and ready for the joys and challenges ahead.
The first day of school is Monday.
“Our teachers and our staff are excited to see kids in our schools,” said Harlingen Superintendent Alicia Noyola.
“They have been spending this whole week doing professional development, getting their rooms ready,” she said Thursday. “They’re doing everything possible to ensure that when our students come back to their school that they are coming back to a great school year.”
Cindy Rountree gushed with excitement Friday morning as she prepared her second-grade classroom at Long Elementary.
“This is where the magic happens,” she said. “I’ve been getting things up on the wall that are important and making the classroom welcoming and bright. I want the kids to come to school and just go, ‘Wow, it’s beautiful in here!’ kind of thing.”
Noyola said the district will enforce the safety guidelines directed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We’re not completely out of this pandemic,” she said. “The biggest difference from 2019 is the work that’s being done in making sure we have measures in place to mitigate the virus. So obviously that’s going to be one of the big changes that’s very different from pre-pandemic.”
She expressed frustration with the quarreling among politicians about face mask mandates.
“Unfortunately, we’re caught in the middle of this political debate on masks and no masks,” she said. “It detracts from us focusing on our true mission, which is education of children.”
Dr. James Castillo, Cameron County health director, expressed a similar sentiment on Friday at the reopening of the Regional Infusion Center to treat COVID patients. The politicizing of masks is an unwanted distraction to the business at hand, he said. He insisted that kids need to be back in school.
“We don’t want to shut down the schools,” Castillo said. “The virus will shut down the schools.”
Noyola said that last year the school district had great results from using all the CDC protocols including the wearing of masks.
“There was minimal if any transmission in the schools,” she said. “The only difference from last year to this year is obviously the fact that masks can’t be mandated at this point. But we are highly recommending that all of our students and staff are utilizing masks.”
A state district judge on Friday granted half a dozen Rio Grande Valley school districts that had filed lawsuits, including Brownsville ISD, a temporary restraining order against Gov. Greg Abbott, blocking his ban on mask mandates.
Shane Strubhart, spokesperson for the Harlingen school district, said that as of Saturday afternoon the district would follow Abbott’s ban on mandates until further notice.
Abbott and the Texas Education Agency have mandated that in-person instruction is the only option that would be funded, Noyola said. Throughout the ordeal of that past 18 months, teachers have spoken consistently about the need to have kids in class.
“It’s not the same thing to try to reach a child through a computer screen as it is to have them directly in front of you,” Noyola said. “We have always recognized that remote instruction is not the ideal. It’s not the same thing to try to reach a child through a computer screen as it is to have them directly in front of you.”
The virtual learning created by school districts across the state and the rest of the nation have served a purpose, but students everywhere have lagged behind in their academic performance. Harlingen is no different.
“We had drops in performance anywhere from ten to 30 points in any given area,” Noyola said. “We feel very comfortable that once we have our students in our classrooms, that we have the tools and we have the staff and we have a concrete plan on how to make up for any learning gaps that may have resulted from COVID. We are very confident with that.”
At the moment, it’s hard to gauge more specifically where Harlingen students are at due to the absence of current test scores. However, that will soon change.
“Our true picture of where our students stand is going to be based on assessment processes and so forth once we have them in our schools,” Noyola said. “Prior to COVID, our students were performing very well, which means that our teachers know exactly what needs to be done to get students to high levels of performance. It’s just a matter of having our children in front of us.”
She said the district has several assessment instruments which will be utilized immediately.
“As we proceed throughout this year it’s really about individualizing our instruction to every child’s needs and focusing on what are a child’s areas of strength, areas of weakness, and how do we continue to improve both of those,” she said.
The district is also ready to meet the needs of some kids that may be traumatized because of the 18-month lockdown.
“As we go into this year we’ve had those kinds of discussions,” she said. “One of the things we pride ourselves on as a school district is never forgetting our hearts for children. We recognize they are all coming in with a very different story.”
A committee to address the social and emotional well-being of students is completing a plan on how to do just that. Teachers are also ready to confront these issues.
Julia Wise, speech, drama and debate teacher at Coakley Middle School, looks forward to helping students use performance art to express their frustrations.
“I am totally aware that for a lot of these kids they haven’t been in an in-person school setting in over a year,” Wise said. “As speech, drama and debate teachers we are going to focus on primarily social and emotional awareness. We want to make sure those aspects are where they should be or give them the tools to bring them up to where they should be. I’m a firm believer that that if students do not feel mentally well, their ability to learn will be impaired.”
Rountree was filling her classroom with the color and environment to make her kids excited about coming to school.
“I like to have the classroom set up beautifully for my children to feel like, ‘This is where I want to be during the day’,” she said. “It’s important to welcome the children and you want to build relationships on that first day. I believe that making it really welcoming and building that relationship with kids, they are going to want to come to school on a daily basis. I try to make this an environment they are going to feel safe in and loved in.”
As in all things, there are ways to work the pandemic to one’s advantage. Noyola said some of the virtual learning systems developed during the pandemic can now be used to enhance learning. The state has agreed to fund some virtual learning from home for students who are sick from COVID, flu or other serious illnesses.
