VIENNA — Maries R-1 Superintendent Mark Parker said they didn’t teach them how to educate students during a pandemic when he was training to be a superintendent. Administrators and staff at the school in Vienna have had to rethink how they make contact with students who are unable to be in classrooms with their teachers. The school can’t provide the same education as they can at school so they are rethinking everything during the pandemic.

Parker said Maries R-1 staff “have been troopers” and are working as a team to get education to as many of the district’s students as possible. They also appreciate the help of the parents who have been directing education during this national crisis.

School work is going to student homes and the completed work is dropped off at the school. To pick up the new school work, there are tables set up inside the doors with the new school work. Most of the students, but not all, are being served in this way.

Teachers are available to the students by email or phone. Parker said in the high school they are getting about 15 calls a day with questions.

“We know its very stressful,” he said.

This week middle school students were sent a large project rather than the usual school work. This was to help cut down on some of the stress students and parents are experiencing by giving them a fun project to work on rather than adding to their stress. They are using a mindset that they can’t cover all of the class content in the way they are operating now, but they can review in an effort to keep what the students have already learned in their minds. As educators, they know there will be a “summer slide” in what they’ve learned.

Operating a school with distance learning has uncovered the lack of good internet access in much of the school district. Maries R-1 serves a largely low-income population with many students on the free and reduced lunch program. Some 70 percent of the district’s 460 students have access to the internet and 50 percent have access to the technology needed to connect with online learning. But, the connection speeds are a problem they can’t overcome by themselves. “We can’t rely on WI-FI, phone data, and internet and not all of the students have a computer,” he said. That’s why they have to get school the school work packets to the students.

Rural school districts are vulnerable in that they don’t have what is optimally needed to educate students who can’t come to the school campus. Virtual education already is making headway during normal times and should not be something rural and low income people don’t have access to. It’s an equity issue. Parker lamented that even telephone company technicians say inadequate internet and phone connection is the price people pay for living in the country.  This means Maries R-1 being a rural school district can’t provide the same education to its students during the pandemic as schools in urban areas. There are those kids who don’t have access to a computer and they can’t rely on a cell phone because of data limitations and the screen on a phone is too small.

This absence of on-campus, in-person education could happen again in the fall, spring and beyond and rural school districts in the state will be looking at government to help solve the problem. Gov. Mike Parson has stated broadband access in Missouri is a top priority.

Locally, right now, the school district has to look forward and try to prepare as well as it can. Currently the next future plan is summer school. Parker said they are ready for if the governor gives the go-ahead for summer school. The governor said the state may be able to be opened in May and the stay-at-home order may be lifted, but they don’t know what that means for schools. Its hard to plan for. However, Parker said Maries R-1 is prepared to go with the Summer Journey program successfully used last year, although the supplies have not yet been received nor paid for. If they are told they have to wait until July 1 to have summer school, then that’s what they’ll do.

“I know its stressful,” he said and encourages the students to have fun with the projects that were sent home. Also, he said, “Be a kid, go outside, help your family. Relax and be a kid.”