What Will NJ Schools Look Like In Fall 2021? Here's A Preview

NEW JERSEY — When students across New Jersey return to school in the fall with full days of classes, it will be the first time many of them have spent any significant time in school buildings since March 2020.

While the debate continues about whether students will be wearing masks, educators say they have two concerns: helping students adjust to being back and helping them cope with the impact of the stresses of the coronavirus pandemic.

"There's not a lot of students at any grade level who have spent any amount of time in buildings in the last year and a half," said David Aderhold, superintendent of the West Windsor-Plainsboro School District. "How do you reacclimate 1.2 million kids?"

Addressing the academic needs and the mental health needs that have resulted from the measures taken during the pandemic were the top concerns expressed Tuesday during the NJ Spotlight roundtable discussion "Back to School In New Jersey: What To Expect This Fall."

Gov. Phil Murphy, who spoke separately as part of the roundtable, reiterated what he has said several times in the last two months: he wants a return to schools that is "as close to normal as possible," with students in school buildings five days a week full time.

"I don't think there's any replacement for the richness that kids get, that educators get from in-person schooling," Murphy said.

The educators who took part in the roundtable weren't so sure about a return to "normal."

"I don't know what that means anymore," said Aderhold, whose district has 9,500 students. "If we try to recreate September 2019, that's not fair to our students and staff."

Kwame R. Morton Sr., principal of Cherry Hill High School West, noted that when Cherry Hill students return in the fall, only the senior class will have spent a full year in school in the high school.

"There is a bit of anxiety about what the students need," he said.

"We can't go back to business as usual," said Lisa R. Gleason, the assistant commissioner overseeing the division of academics and performance at the New Jersey Department of Education. "We have to make sure our focus is on the social and emotional needs of the students and staff first, so they think of school as a safe place, before getting to a new normal."

The biggest piece of feeling "normal" involves the debate around wearing masks in school. With the hot days of early June, Murphy gave the go-ahead for districts to decide whether it was too hot for students and staff to wear masks in school all day.

For the fall, however, "it's too early to be definitive" on whether they will be required, Murphy said. "I'm not a medical expert. I'm relying on conversations with those who are."

Murphy said he believes the issue of masking in schools in the fall will boil down to the status of vaccinations and the impact of the Delta variant of COVID-19 that has raised concerns because of its transmissibility.

"The virus continues to dictate the terms," he said, adding that he believes COVID-19 "will end up being like the flu over time — with us, but we go on with our lives."

Murphy said he is not inclined to have a widespread virtual option for families who are uncomfortable about having their children back in school, however.

"We're going to have to have some level of latitude for folks with health concerns but the bar will be really high," he said. Simply being uncomfortable with children being around unvaccinated is not at the same level as someone whose child is medically fragile.

As for COVID-19 vaccinations being required for students to be in school, Murphy noted there are no vaccines approved for children under 12.

Aderhold said the issue of masks will be vexing for districts.

"Ever since the governor gave us flexibility (in the heat), it's been an outright war to uphold mask mandates," he said. Mask rules will need to not only factor in where the unvaccinated population is — primarily students younger than 12 — but also must keep in mind that school districts have a range of people whose needs must be kept in mind, including teachers, aides, custodians, cafeteria workers and bus drivers.

"There's going to need to be some reasonableness about where our unvaccinated population is," Aderhold said.

Gleason said masking rules come from the state health department.

"The overarching goal is the safe return," she said. "The decisions made around health and safety are not made in a vacuum and are guided by science and data."

If social distancing rules remain in place for classrooms, that will pose challenges for districts where there are larger class sizes, Aderhold said.

"As you move to classes of 24, 27 students, you're going back to desks in rows," he said. Small-group instruction, which had been a staple in classrooms as teachers work to meet the needs of students from those who learn quickly to those who need more support, will have to take on different forms, the educators said.

"We're going to have to be creative," Aderhold said.

Gleason said that's where some of the lessons of the last year with virtual learning will benefit teachers, as they can potentially use Google Classroom or other sources for those small-group interactions right in their physical classroom.

"We've seen some really successful practices and innovation with the technology," she said. The state education department is compiling a list of best practices to offer guidance to schools on ways to make the most of the technology to serve students.

Murphy said the state will have to help districts put in place what they need to meet the social distancing needs, from upgrading their HVAC systems to desk partitions, adding he hopes districts will use the funding they are receiving through the American Rescue Plan to upgrade their ventilation systems.

While the logistics of having kids in school full-time is an ongoing discussion, the educators said their concerns and focus are on supporting students' mental health and academic needs. Both of those are going to be significant challenges, they said.

The state has assessment tests planned for the start of the school year to gauge the academic needs. The Start Strong Assessment, set to be given from mid-September to the third week in October, will look at where students are compared with what they were expected to learn.

But Gleason, from the state education department, said getting students comfortable is the bigger hurdle and concern.

"Until we tend to the social-emotional learning, we can't move to the academic piece," she said.

Morton said Cherry Hill, like most districts, will have summer programs in place to help students transition to the new school year.

Students have learned other skills they might not otherwise, including resiliency and digital technology, skills that will position them for success in the ever-changing work world, he said.

"Many of the jobs that exist today didn't exist 10 years ago and will continue to evolve," Morton said.

Chantel Wooten, a sixth-grade English/language arts teacher at Joyce Kilmer School in Trenton, said she does not see virtual learning going away.

"I believe my school is going to continue with that because it worked so well for us," Wooten said. "I still like paper and pen, I tell them, 'get your notebooks and pens out,' but I'll use that (the digital tools) as a part of their writing tools."

Meeting the mental health needs of students will be the biggest challenge, however, as school districts face dual issues that add to the stress.

First, there is a shortage of teachers, and second, mental health resources for children are scarce and access is worsening.

"We're hearing constantly of shortages in the field," Aderhold said, and districts are getting into bidding wars over teachers in nearly every subject area.

"It used to be just the high-profile positions," such as special education or languages, he said. "Now it's almost everything except language arts and elementary teachers."

Teachers are the front lines in helping students with the mental health aspects, which is why there needs to be an emphasis on allowing them to build relationships with their students before jumping into assessments, Aderhold said.

"As much as content's important in assessing learning loss, we need to give teachers time to build those relationships," he said.

"My concern is more the student per se. They are human," Wooten said. She works to build those relationships from the first day of school by celebrating the return to school, so her students see that even as she is strict, she loves to have fun.

She said the issue of academic deficits was happening long before the pandemic.

"In the summertime students don't immerse themselves in reading and writing," she said. "They lose something anyway." She would like to see the state move to having the 180-day school calendar spread out across the entire year, with longer breaks between quarters.

The mental health concerns are significant, Morton said, and not simply confined to the isolation of interacting with classmates and teachers through a computer screen.

"This has been emotionally taxing for our kids," Morton said. "It's been a lot to endure, a lot to take in," because of the social unrest that has happened in tandem with the pandemic. Cherry Hill has student advocates and its student assistance counselors as a starting point, but both he and Aderhold said mental health supports were strained long before the pandemic.

"Are there enough counselors out there? Are there the resources and bodies to supply these supports? This goes far beyond what the schools can provide," Aderhold said.

For students who need intensive help, waiting lists for beds in a mental health facility can be more than 30 days, with those timeframes more extreme in south Jersey and the rural northwestern part of the state.

"This is a drain that has existed long before the pandemic," he said, but as it has with so many things, the pandemic exposed the enormous need.

Gleason said the state is looking at ways to ease the shortages, with legislation to add flexibility for certifications, potentially creating more mental health supports.

"The strains on the health care industry are very real," she said. "These are real issues we are actively discussing in the department. We have to think long-term about a fix for this, because the short-term fixes are exactly that. Outbidding one district for another solves one problem but create a problem for another district."

Murphy said that he believes the state's education system will be able to take care of what's needed to address the issues.

"The courage, persistence and incredible hard work will make up for that learning loss and make up for those mental health challenges," he said.

He also said he would not have changed the call to shut down schools at the start of the pandemic.

"That was absolutely the right call," Murphy said. "I think we're going to be in a dramatically different and better place" in the fall.

"We have a tremendous opportunity to create equity," Morton said, "where no child is invisible and every child is seen."

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