Waaaay back in August, at the start of this school year, Baby Yoda roamed our hallways collecting positive predictions for the upcoming school year. (Yes, Star Wars zealots, I know it’s not Baby Yoda.) The green guy himself was vacationing on Dagobah, so I opted for a Baby Yoda backpack, where I placed the prognostications of students from PK to 12th grade. As you can imagine, a distinct theme ran through them: the fear of more preemptive school closures. Of course, some drew pictures, and many shared hopes of new friends, but others relayed the nightmares of quarantines and forced virtual school. Their thoughts touched my heart and made Grogu’s little chin wrinkle.
As Oklahoma schools prepare for the 2022 graduation, August seems like a lifetime ago, but we must remember waaaay back to May of 2021, when we also thought this was behind us. Most Oklahoma schools managed to stay open during the 2020-21 school year, but many districts across our nation had closed (or went virtual, which is virtually the same thing) after the forced closures of March 2020. Nevertheless, last May, we all thought it was behind us. COVID cases were falling. We had several vaccines! By mid-July, however, Baby Yoda’s little ears began to wiggle at the demands for schools to close again.
In many ways, however, this year started worse than either the 2019-20 or 2020-21 school year. By August of 2021, we had nearly 18 months of experience with COVID. Schools like Duncan across the nation proved that we could resist preemptive closures. Quarantines disproportionately impacted schools, exhausting parents, terrifying students, and demoralizing educators, but communities figured it out – at the local level – despite the faraway political theater.
This was never a political issue to most educators; it was a kid-level issue. Kids deserved the normalcy of schools. Their mental, physical, and emotional health depended upon it, and by August of 2021, we all knew it. Districts across the nation like Duncan defied the odds and stayed open in 2020-21, a year without vaccines. We all complied, for we were scared, but we kept as many Baby Yoda’s in school as possible. We thought 2021-22 would be a breeze, but it was tougher than ever.
There is no excuse for what happened this school year on a national scale, however. Schools were mercilessly churned through the educational spin cycle, either preemptively closed or demonized for staying open. We had enough evidence (and vaccines) to avoid all of it, but we started school in August with greater fear than the prior year (when we knew very little). I have never seen a more vicious or harmful time in education.
Here we are, May 2022, and we are about to enter a national political season. Grogu’s ears are once again twitching, for not-sosubtle messages are already going out, and it seems like schools could once again become COVID battlegrounds. If so, you will start to see battles over closures, masks, and vaccines erupt mid-July. If that happens, will we once again stop seeing each other through our Cable News Goggles, instead of as people and neighbors? Or, will we resolutely determine to give our Baby Yodas a normal school year?
I will return to the hallways in these final days of school with my Baby Yoda backpack, and we will return every student’s positive predictions to them. Kids grow up so much in a year that their words will seem like a stranger wrote them, but hopefully, most of their predictions came true. Those that hoped we would not preemptively close schools saw their predictions realized, but if we think that battle is over, we (and Grogu) may be sorely disappointed in 2022-23. Let’s decide to protect our Baby Yoda’s with open schools next year, and please don’t forget to pray for the safety of our schools this Second Sunday of the Month.
Tom Deighan is superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. You may email him at deighantom@gmail. com and read past articles at www.mostlyeducational.com