For first time since 2019, all Marion County districts reopening sans COVID restrictions

Through polarizing arguments on masking, organizing online schooling and navigating changing guidelines from the health department over the past two-and-a-half years, schools were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, for the first time since 2019, all Marion County districts are celebrating the return to school without mask mandates or the "Mask to Stay, Test to Play" guidelines from the health department.

Superintendents across the county expressed excitement that their schools can now return to educating Marion County's students without COVID taking up mental and emotional energy from educational leadership.

Prior to the 2021 - 2022 schoolyear, Marion City Schools announced its decision to instill a universal mask mandate, and within the first few weeks of the year, Ridgedale, River Valley and Pleasant had all followed suit.

Although Elgin chose to stay mask-optional, the district was still facing contact tracing requirements and the "Mask to Stay, Test to Play" protocol from the health department, Superintendent Lane Warner explained.

“There was still a lot of time being spent by multiple people, from teachers through office workers and administration, so certainly it’s nice this year to not have that as a primary focus," he said.

"Still it’s there, because we know that COVID is still around and these new variants seem to be pretty contagious in spreading, but the mandated protocols aren’t there in place so it’s more and more moving in the direction of parent choice and responsibility with it, so we can get back to teaching and learning, which is really what we’re here for."

Warner said the district is still working to address learning loss and using the COVID-relief ESSER money responsibly to install new staff members to address increased need and changing legislation.

“We’re seeing the effects on COVID shutdown, educationally speaking, and we’ll probably see those for multiple more years,” he said.

For each of the Marion County districts, there are no COVID restrictions from the health department or internal administration, and students and staff are back in the buildings full-time.

At Ridgedale, the district made the decision to cut an online learning model after the Ohio Department of Health announced it would no longer require the "Mask to Stay, Test to Play" protocol after the CDC updated its general guidelines Aug. 11 to say a positive test would require an individual to stay home for five days and then wear a mask for five more.

The district posted a COVID update on its website including this information.

Only five students signed up for the online learning, according to Superintendent Dr. Erika Bower, and the district wanted to keep all students in the buildings.“We thought we were going to be able to, but the more we looked into the requirements now – those have changed each year with COVID, the changes with COVID – the restrictions have gotten more and more (loose)," she said.

With this update from the health department and no additional restrictions being added, Pleasant Superintendent Jennifer Adams said the district plans to return to its directions and goals that were outlined before the pandemic.

“Prior to COVID, we were on a path of really working with implemented blended learning, we were looking at how to create unique and authentic student experiences, and so hopefully our students will be a part of that and also give us feedback into ‘Where do we go from here,’ because the reality is, even though we are hopefully post-COVID, COVID did affect everyone," she said.

"So it’s determining what’s next and plans that we had prior to COVID – we just talked this morning, and we feel they’re still the right plans, but the journey now looks different and figuring that out is really important."

As she prepares to hand the district off to incoming Superintendent Tom McDonnell, she said it is a relief to know that the new leadership will not have to lead in COVID conditions and can focus on education once more.

"It’s a good feeling knowing the new people coming in are hopefully not having to weather the COVID storm, and that we can get back to just focusing on academics,” Adams said.

Returning to "normalcy"

At River Valley, Superintendent Adam Wickham said he is just looking forward to a return to a sense of normalcy, noting that the district has already seen great attendance for in-person events this fall.

"We are so excited about what we hope will be a normal year, especially since we haven't had a full normal year for the past three school years," Wickham said.

"There is excitement from our staff, students and parents. We had a great community event with the Viking Bash last Friday and had a huge turnout for the football game that night."

When it comes to in-person versus online learning, research has found social interaction is the greatest barrier to online learning models.

Marion City Schools Interim Superintendent Steve Mazzi said he hopes the return to in-person and unmasked learning will increase student achievement, especially for students in one-on-one tutoring or working with a speech language pathologist.

"You go from teaching in front of a classroom when the kid is used to seeing your face and watching you talk, that’s a big part of it, and the teacher then seeing that in students and watching them react to different things, you know, facial expressions, the voice,” he said.

“Beyond all of that, you would hope that student achievement would grow proportionally without COVID restrictions,” he said later.

Though Mazzi was not leading Marion City Schools throughout the pandemic, he said believes that for the district and beyond there is a sense that schools can move forward from the years of COVID-19 and return to programming that was lost.

“Educators now are able to move forward with initiatives that were lost during COVID due to so many restrictions, oh gosh, not to mention social distancing, so they’re able to move forward with those things that will really impact student education," Mazzi said.

Story by: Sophia Veneziano (740) 564 - 5243 ∣ sveneziano@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on Marion Star: Back to school: Marion County schools opening sans COVID restrictions