St. Mary School taking hybrid approach to teaching students in age of pandemic

Finding new ways to educate students in the age of a pandemic is what every school is faced with for the rapidly-approaching 2020-21 school year.

St Mary School, a Catholic private school in Aberdeen is no different, but it just may have found a formula that addresses the needs of its students with a hybrid approach to instruction.

Saint Mary is using what it calls a “safe start plan” that includes different models for its varying group of students.

Preschool and pre-kindergarten (early learning) students will begin the school year with the more traditional in-person instruction for four hours per day, four days per week.

Kindergarten through eighth grade students will start the year with a combination of full-tine “remote learning” (online instruction) and one in-person “Cohort Day” per week.

Monday’s reports from the health department of a spike in local positive coronavirus cases had administrators concerned their Safe Start Plan would have to be scrapped for remote learning, but after a conversation with the health department Tuesday afternoon, St. Mary School Principal Carrie Marlow assured the plan is still in place.

“At this time we are moving forward with our current (Safe Start) plan, but we are also watching the COVID case-rate data closely as it is currently trending upward,” she said. “Any consistent trend upward may force us to pivot to remote learning only.”

According to the school’s Advancement Director, Pete Scroggs, the in-person Cohort Day will be used for a variety of student-involved activities.

“Students will gather for social/emotional activities, one-on-one check-ins between teacher and student, and library and technology time (to name a few),” he wrote in an email to The Daily World. “Each grade is divided into three cohort groups of five to six students each to maximize student and staff safety.”

The Safe Start Plan will be re-evaluated every three weeks as the school will be monitoring Grays Harbor County COVID-19 data and metrics and will adhere to state and county health and safety guidelines, according to information on the school’s website.

“Our goal is to transition to more frequent in-person days as soon as the COVID-19 case rates in our county improve and it is deemed safe to do so by the Grays Harbor County Health Department,” Scroggs wrote.

Scroggs stated that the school is dedicated to in-person learning, but had to adjust due to pandemic-related health concerns.

“From the beginning, our staff realized that the ideal situation for students from both an educational and social/emotional standpoint is in-person learning,” he wrote. “However, knowing that we might not be able to start the year in person, the staff worked hard this summer to develop a remote learning plan that we can transition into and out of as the situation changes.

“Our small size has allowed us to be very flexible in this regard and to keep our families in the loop concerning our plans. We took guidance from the Grays Harbor County Health Department, the Washington State Department of Health and the Archdiocese of Seattle in developing our safe start plan, and will rely on their advice as the year progresses.”

Keeping students, staff and families safe is also a priority of Saint Mary School.

“We know that if we want to return to in-person learning, we must keep our students, staff, and families safe and healthy,” Scroggs wrote. “Our staff has spent a great deal of time putting together a variety of procedures, not just to comply with regulations, but to minimize risk.”

Some of those measures include all students having their temperatures checked and being screened for other risk factors before heading through the school doors. The school has also scheduled the flow of the student body while inside the school to minimize contact between different student groups.

Scroggs adds the school was able to partner with other schools to secure personal protective equipment and has remained in frequent contact with county health officials.

“We were fortunate to partner with a large number of schools, both public and private, to place a bulk PPE order that will give us plenty of masks, sanitizer, thermometers, etc.,” he wrote. “Our school administration has also been meeting weekly with Grays Harbor County Health Department officials and other school administrators in the county to discuss reopening plans. “

St. Mary has also remained in contact with the parents of its students, many of whom want their children to learn in a traditional classroom setting.

“Our parents have overwhelmingly expressed their desire for students to return to the classroom as soon as it is safe for them to do so,” he wrote.

With public schools in the area moving to an online-only curriculum for the fall semester, interest in schools offering some sort of in-person instruction has increased.

“We have definitely had a larger number of inquiries than normal this summer,” Scroggs wrote. “At the same time, the social distancing guidelines have forced us to cap the size of our classes so that we have not been able to take as many new families as we would like.”

Scroggs also explained that the school is working to assist families with remote learning, including loaning iPads and MacBooks to access remote lessons and teachers recording their lessons to be viewed multiple times if necessary.

So while the school has a goal of returning to in-person learning as soon as feasible, it is doing what it can in the meantime to make the most of an imperfect situation.

St. Mary School teachers Kathy Gwinn, foreground, and Tiffanie Kelly work on Monday to prepare the school for the arrival of students starting Sept. 1. (Ryan Sparks | Grays Harbor News Group)