By JOSH RESNEK
More than 7,000 Everett Public School students began the new school year Tuesday at home looking into their computers or Chromebooks and listening to their teachers attempting to be online educators.
The Coronavirus has revolutionized public school education at the start of this year in school districts like Everett where in person schooling inside classrooms will not begin again until November, if at all.
Call it a reckoning, call it whatever you will, the virus has rather abruptly and completely reset the public school education protocol.
Even in those places where the schools have reopened, with students attending classes on campus, there is the unwritten understanding among nearly everyone involved with the learning process and safety of the students that public school education may never again be the way it was.
Not since 1918 have public schools been forced to close or to distance students from one another and for everyone attending to wear facemasks in order to keep the virus from spreading among them.
Many teachers did their teaching duties from their classrooms.
Many others opted to teach from home – and a small handful have simply said they are done with it because they have serious health issues, or don’t want to attempt teaching remotely on computer.
“Everett’s school administration is not Draconian at all,” said a school department official.
“Teachers can teach from home or from their rooms inside the schools. If they have preexisting conditions such as heart disease or cancer, they are not required to teach from the schools where they are assigned,” added the official.
In Lynn, for instance, teachers are forced to teach from their classrooms inside the schools.
Only the most serious pre-existing conditions are allowed as reasons not to teach from their classrooms.
“I just said to heck with it,” said a 25 year veteran of the Lynn Public Schools.
A longtime Chelsea English teacher who believed teaching should get as personal as possible with her students also called it quits this week.
“I just can’t see myself teaching kids online. Maybe it will be good, but it isn’t for me,” Carol Resnek told the Leader Herald.
Many administrators are wondering what average attendance will be like online.
We hope to have those figures next week.