A superintendent confronts a 2nd pandemic school year

Less than a week into the school year, cases of Covid-19-positive students are popping up in schools all around the state. Gov. Phil Scott so far has declined to mandate face masks in schools, but he recommends that students and educators wear masks. It has been left to each school district to decide whether or not to mask. “We’re going to always do whatever it takes. We’re going to keep kids as safe as we humanly can,” said Brigid Nease, superintendent of the Harwood Unified Union School District, which includes Waterbury, Duxbury, Waitsfield, Moretown, Warren and Fayston. On Sunday, Nease was notified that a student at Crossett Brook Middle School had tested positive for Covid-19. By Monday, 23 middle school students were in quarantine. Nease said she is concerned by the minimal guidance that schools have received from the state. “Each superintendent is really feeling … that we are just out here alone trying to determine what we need to do with what our community will support and what the spread looks like in our own community,” she said Educators are also trying to resist being dragged into the culture wars around masking and vaccines. “I am hearing direct reports of personal fear from principals and superintendents," Nease wrote in her back-to-school letter to the community on Aug. 19. "One of my superintendent colleagues has received a death threat. Some principals are receiving letters from groups threatening to storm the schools on the first day. Leaders are receiving voicemails from very angry community members screaming at them. Today, when seeking out advice and support we were told to access law enforcement.” Nease discusses the uncertainty and anxiety around the new school year and how she and other educators are managing a second pandemic school year.