Healthy start to school year in Lakewood Ranch

Every Monday through Wednesday, Braden River High School senior Jordan Sheehan is at home watching videos his teachers created for class.

“For not actually going to school, it’s not that different than what I had last year going to school every day,” Sheehan said.

On Thursdays and Fridays, Sheehan switches gears and goes on campus for in-person learning. 

Sheehan is part of the 45% of students enrolled at Braden River High who decided to participate in the hybrid schedule. Although he switches from online to in-person learning in the middle of the week, Sheehan said the change is seamless.

“It’s going a lot better than expected,” Sheehan said. “It’s nice to be back, and given the fact it’s completely impossible to distance everybody at all times, I think [the school and School District of Manatee County] are doing as much as possible.”

Now a month into the school year, East County families have found the school district’s reopening plan has gone as well as could be expected.

Michelle Cramer, a mother of a sixth grader at Dr. Mona Jain Middle School and a third grader at B.D. Gullett Elementary School, said she was “freaking out” more than her kids before the start of school with the uncertainty going into the new year and the new health and safety procedures put into place. With Cramer and her husband working full time, they had to send their children back to school full time.

“Honestly, right now I feel it  has been running like a well-oiled machine,” Cramer said. “When any issues have come up, they’ve addressed it immediately. I think right now we’re all going with the flow because it’s such a new thing. We’re all learning as we go. Sure, there’s always room for improvement, but they’re taking care of it when they get to that road.”

Mike Barber, a spokesperson for the School District of Manatee County, said the reopening plan is going well.

“Like everything with COVID-19, things are constantly changing, and you learn from it, and you adapt and keep moving forward,” Barber said. “I would say one of the things that’s been encouraging to us is the fact we get a sense that our students and parents want to be in school. We’re doing everything we can to provide as much of a normal experience.”

The district has implemented several health and safety procedures from desks being spread 6 feet apart and plexiglass being put between desks and lunch tables to instituting a mask policy and enforcing one-way hallways and staircases.

“We’re almost a month into this, and the fact the school has not shut down is, I think, all that needs to be said,” said Debbie O’Keefe, a mother of a fifth grader at Robert E. Willis Elementary School. “I think the new status quo is working, and I’m OK with the status quo. As it stands right now, I don’t think there’s anything more [schools] should do.”

The district has more than 47,000 students and employees working in its traditional schools and support sites, and as of Sept. 14, the district has 15 confirmed COVID-19 cases (among, students, teachers and staff). The district created a dashboard that can be found on its website sharing confirmed cases broken down by school. The dashboard also informs whether the case was a student or an employee and the number of people who were asked to quarantine as a result of direct exposure.

None of the schools has closed a portion of a school or an entire school due to confirmed cases as Superintendent Cynthia Saunders thought could happen.

“That’s in large part due to the excellent job of contact tracing and the way our schools are responding to maintaining social distancing in the classrooms, having seating charts and keeping track of where everybody is,” Barber said. “You have to stay constantly vigilant about it. … As soon as you let your guard down, that’s when you see a rise in cases.”

So far eight East County schools have reported confirmed cases, including Gullett and Willis elementary schools.

O’Keefe and Cramer said their schools have done an excellent job in notifying parents about confirmed cases at school and what the schools are doing in response. When sitting in class two days per week, Isabella Pasquale, a sophomore at Braden River High, said she feels comfortable and that the school has been enforcing social distancing more on campus.

“I’m glad I’m back on campus,” Pasquale said. “Just feeling like I’m at school again, and being at school, I feel the school year has actually started. I feel like if I was doing just e-learning, my mind wouldn’t be able to wrap around the idea that school started, and it’s not summer anymore. It’s definitely nice to go back to campus for the school environment but also to see my friends and my classmates and learn together again.” 

While some students are flourishing, others are having trouble adjusting to the new safety measures. 

Angie Reeves, a parent at Freedom Elementary School, said her son, who is in second grade, has been struggling to adjust to wearing a mask all day while her daughter, who is in fifth grade, is doing outstanding.

Reeves has tried more than eight different variations of a mask to help her son be able to focus in class rather than on the mask. Her son was also having difficulties with the teacher.

Reeves said after talking with the principal, Guy Grimes, over the phone, she felt her concerns were heard and that the school was working well with her to address her son’s needs.

“Our school has been phenomenal in communication and doing everything they can correctly and also keeping things as normal as they can for the kids,” Reeves said. “Overall, I think at the end of the fourth week with all the struggles with my son, we’re still doing so much better than so many other [districts].”