On Friday, March 13, 2020, the governor of Virginia declared all schools, public and private, go into lockdown mode. That day, local school systems closed normal face to face operations and began a new virtual era in K-12 education in Staunton and across all public and private schools in Virginia. At C.F. Richards Christian School, we had regularly performed safety drills for fires, tornadoes, and even met with our local police department to learn ways to prevent and respond in the event of a random shooter, but never had we considered how we would respond to a worldwide pandemic!
It was a very challenging time for everyone, including the staff and families at our school. We closed the school to students for a couple of days while we met as a staff to plan a way forward in this new virtual environment. Fortunately, as we prepared for the reality of teaching online, we had the technical knowledge and equipment to meet the needs of the students. We incorporated online teaching platforms including Google Classroom for the older children and Seesaw for the lower grades to communicate with the students and parents about ongoing classwork.
From mid-March through the first week of June, teachers and students worked from home. Shortly before graduation all the teachers got together and took the initiative to devise ways to visit our students at home. We created signs that read “an awesome student lives here” and drove around the area, parade style, staking the signs in their yards to remind them, and their families, that they were still in our hearts and had not been forgotten. The school talent show and eighth-grade graduation were held remotely. I held back tears as the children graduated virtually, missing not being able to give them hugs after years of watching them bloom. I was very grateful for the technical expertise of friends who helped produce these events.
For some of our students, the emotional stress of learning from home was quite difficult. Losing their familiar social network, not being able to see their friends for an extended period and being isolated took its toll. I am very grateful to our parents and grandparents that stepped in to facilitate learning from home! We are blessed to have students, staff, and parents who share the common goal of positively dealing with challenges by realizing that God is always at work in the background even amidst world-wide plagues!
Summer break was soon upon us and we took the time to plan for the upcoming year. We developed a hybrid learning approach for 2020-2021 and made sure we had all the online resources available to carry it out successfully. In the hybrid approach, parents could decide to keep their children learning at home or at school. Overall, most parents opted to have their children return to a live, face-to-face setting while a handful made the decision to lessen exposure risks by continuing online learning at home. We developed a back-to-school plan based on recommendations by the Virginia Department of Health, the Virginia Department of Education, and the Centers for Disease Control.
Our school was fortunate to receive special funding from the Potomac Conference Education Department to ensure we had all the necessary supplies for special signage, frequent cleaning, and other resources to keep our school as safe as possible when the new school year began. We have been blessed not to have a case of COVID-19 occur in our facility so far, thanks to the diligence of our parents keeping their children home when sick or when possibly exposed to the virus. We can also credit our school’s strict health and safety policies with helping to prevent the virus from entering our school.
Our comprehensive virus protection plan includes: daily temperature checks, a mandatory mask policy, in-school social distancing, class size limits, frequent cleaning and disinfecting by teachers and our janitorial staff, good student hygiene practices, outdoor learning opportunities, virtual guest speakers and field trips, and a no visitor policy (even parents are not allowed in the building during normal school hours as an extra preventative measure).
All of our students, including our pre-kindergarten children, adapted to wearing masks and dealing with all the added precautions that became the “new normal” for our staff and students. Everyone is happy to be back in the classroom! While we take wise steps in preventing the spread of COVID-19, ultimately God is in control. I believe our school does a great job conveying that message each week, and the students have come to realize that they are all in His hands as we venture through these stressful times together.
We are thankful for the ongoing help from our supporting churches who have continued to come up with ways to help our students with unexpected financial challenges that occurred due to COVID-19. Successful fundraising programs and generous donations have helped several of our families. In addition, the school’s conference found ways to supplement school costs.
Looking forward to 2021-2022, I anticipate we will still be wearing masks to start off the new school year, but my hope is that everyone will be back to school in-person because it is the best way for children to learn. But, like now, I am sure we will make exceptions for children or families with special needs, just like Christ does for us all. God has been good to C.F. Richards Christian School and we are thankful for His watch care. Why not consider joining our school family in the upcoming 2021-2022 school year?
At C.F. Richards, we are a community of learners who love God and serve others. The school is a ministry of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. If you are interested in learning more about the mission and programs of C.F. Richards Christian School please email the principal at jhackley@cfrichards.org, visit our website www.cfrichards.org, or call 540-886-4984.
A link to “Current and Past Local Stats for COVID Infection in Virginia K-12 Schools” can be found on the Virginia Department of Health Website.