EUFSD Superintendent Marc Baiocco discusses Covid-19 impact

Like so many districts throughout the state contending with the impact of coronavirus, the Elmsford Union Free School District had to adopt a distance learning system as schools were closed for an extended period. Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Marc Baiocco, took a few minutes to share what he has learned and how the district is managing in these unprecedented times.

Q: When did you begin to realize this was a long-term issue?

A: Things really began to change in the middle part of last week (March 25) when listening to the governors briefing and the county executives. In our phone conversations we were told to start preparing for the probability of extended closure.

Q: What were your impressions about what was happening early on?

A: The hope was the virus was not going to be as bad as predicted. That eventually we’d have a return to normalcy in terms of our school days. We started to see how the widespread nature of the virus was impacting our communities. We were faced with the reality that we were looking at something more long term. We needed to have an instructional plan in place, but also a social and emotional plan in place.

Q: How did you plan for the long-term closure?

A: This is my eleventh year in the district. I recall in 2009 dealing with N1H1, at that point in time we created a pandemic plan. That plan, it kind of had a basic approach to how we were going to move to a distance learning platform. In 2009 the technology infrastructure was so different. Today we are so much more equipped at moving towards a virtual learning environment but having that plan from way back when allowed us to really start looking at what the potential for a distance learning environment would look like.

Q: How did you go about coordinating teachers, staff and students?

A: As we looked through our plan one of our biggest considerations was what exactly the landscape we were faced with, in this case an extended closure. As we started to move to that it was prudent for us to really look at the communication portion of that plan and make sure we improved the communication to make it as effective as possible. When the coronavirus became a reality for us, we took a deep dive in to the plan and made changes based on resources we had.

Q: What has been the response of families, community?

A: Our families, they are adapting really well. They are really flexible in this whole new learning environment. But it is difficult. We have to be cognizant of that. We keep reminding our parents that we are asking them to become teachers. We are going to provide them guidance along the way. The teachers are struggling at this point to constantly shift their learning, asking how do we create the proper venue so students have equal access, that our students with special needs have what they need, and English language learners have the support they need to be successful. Each week we are making improvements in addressing our student’s needs.

The students? I am extremely proud of the work they are doing. Once everyone realized we are in this for the long haul, this was not short term, at that point students started to engage even more. We are making the best of it, making it as meaningful and as fun as possible.

Q: What is a typical day like for you these days?

A: I live in virtual meeting rooms, starting at 7 or 7:30 a.m. with some updates in the cabinet. I touch base with administrators. We have a very supportive superintendent network with others in the county and we have frequent meetings, sometimes daily, talking about what are some of the other communities doing, what are their plans as we move forward. A lot of it is about receiving updates from the county, the local municipality and at the state level to see what changes are coming down. The past two weeks have been focused on what are we doing with the school calendar and most recently looking at the budget impacts.

Q: What is the biggest lesson you learned from all of this in terms of EUFSD?

A: The biggest lesson is not to take anything for granted, always have a plan to move into some sort of long-distance environment. One of the things we did really well, as we saw the long term spread nature of the virus, we created a plan to get Chromebooks, getting technology into our plans, partnering with some of local internet providers to get it to those without. We are improving as we move along--what is the platform we will use consistently across the board, there is never a one size fits all. In the primary grades we are using Seesaw for teacher instruction delivery. In elementary and high school, we are using Google Classroom.

Q: What message would you like to share with your community?

A: My message is ‘thank you’ for the partnerships, the continued partnerships. Hang in there, we are going to get through this together. We are constantly trying to find community-based organizations that are going to help our families. We are partnering with Feeding Westchester to do a mobile food pantry. We are trying to increase ways to help families.