It's Tuesday, March. I'm oscar A mirrors from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America. One of the biggest debates of the pandemic was how to proceed with school as the virus disrupted everything. Everything from learning remotely or in person to wearing masks was a point of contention, but at the Louis Palmer School District in Colorado, they chose to keep kids in class
and made masks optional. What resulted were students who flourished and boost some of their test scores, while other districts in the state lag behind. Perry Stein, education reporter at the Washington Post, joins us for how this district tried to proceed as normal. Thanks for joining us, Perry. Thanks. Well, we all saw a lot of different effects going on because of the pandemic on schools. I mean, it was just a huge disruptor closings and then openings, and then
arguments about mask wearing. It really played out very loudly across the country. And you know, on on one hand, we had parents and teachers, teachers unions saying we need to have kids remote learning for fear of the virus. Spreading, we need masks if we're gonna do in person learning. And on the other side, we had a lot of parents say, you know, we need our kids in school because they're languishing at home, or you know, we don't want them to wear a mask because it's just kind
of unnatural. They need they need to be free, and kids are spared some of the worst effects of the virus. So there was all these conversations going on. But you wrote an article looking at the Louis Palmer School District in Colorado, which kind of went the other way. I mean, they said we're gonna still do in person learning and not do the whole remote learning thing. They really didn't do too much to contain the actual virus, and their
students did really well. We saw their h a lot of their their school rates go up when a lot of the other rates in the in Colorado were going down. So there's a lot to unpack here. So Perry, tell
us what the Lewis Palmer district did. Definitely, Yeah, I just as you said, I spent a lot of my pandemic covering school districts that really didn't reopen last year, so I out to find one that did reopen, and so I landed on Louis Palmer, which is right outside of Colorado Springs, and they opened in the hall of with all elementary school students in person full time, where I should say all elementary students who wanted to go. Families could still do virtual, but the overwhelming opted to
go in person five days a week. They decided they based this off the study that showed at the time that kids tennant under didn't spread the virus as much, so they decided to go maskless UM to make masks optional at the elementary school level in classrooms. UM. And you know, it was at the time Louis Palmer or the county that was Palmer is located in they didn't have They were below national averages on um COVID rates.
It's a pretty wealthy school district, so a lot of parents working from home, and it's pretty um, you know, it's it's a sprawling nehe it's not like city. There's like if there's like one or two apartment buildings that I saw that, you know, and those were small buildings that served as school district. So you know, people were moving on top of each other. And they went to reopen school and parents and teachers felt comfortable with this
and they did it. Yeah, and you know, we saw the negative effects that happened play out because of some of the closures. Obviously a lot of kids found it really difficult to learn at home. It just wasn't their regular thing. We saw a lot of them have mental health issues that emotional maturity just from not being around peers and kind of learning how things go. We've heard of a lot of fights breaking out as soon as
kids started going back to school, you know. So we see, we've seen all these negative effects, but here in this school district, thankfully, a lot of that stuff didn't happen. Tell me about some of the test scores that we saw, because this is where I think in reading, a lot of the students had an uptake. Maybe in math not so much, but they were having great scores compared to the overall state numbers. Yeah, I think that's true. And
I want to be clear. I mean hits here and the school leaders will still tell you that in Lois Palm where they did endure the pandemic, right, and that's really stressful, the uncertainty they had, Quarantines, routines were broken. I'm sure parents had anxiety some of their that you know, kids can feel and understand, so they do still, you know, they are still seeing some mental health concerns. They are still having what they're what I would refer to as
pandemic induced challenges that they are needing to address. So they weren't spared the pandemic. But yeah, I mean, I think you see the results coming out of there are better. I mean, no one argued that virtual learning for the vast majority of kids is better than in personal and so they benefited from getting a whole lot more of
in person learning. So at the elementary school early you did see big gains in reading UM that outpaced UM scores UM math everywhere in the country from what I have seen, that was really hard to the online UM. You know, you'd see uh some drops there, but not
as big as UM the states drop. And something interesting that I saw the improvements among some of the special education kids that those were the kids that I think largely have been you know, vulnerable kids that have been UM set back the most from the pandemic because you know, a lot of their plans and services such as speech therapy, some kids occupational therapy. One on one, so it couldn't
be delivered as effectively online. Um. Lewis Palmer did bring back UM even their high school special education, their most UM, the kids with the highest needs in high school. They brought them back five days a week by November or in November. So UM, so those were some of the hopeful things. They still had challenges. I mean, there is a big achievement gap in Lewis. There is an achievement gap in b was Palmer between UM between white students and students of color, and that did not UM improve
during the pandemic. This figures right into the conversation as I mentioned earlier, right that there was this kind of fight on both sides, you know, who would be right, and a lot of this when you look at Louis Palmer. You know a lot of people say, well, they got lucky that there were no huge outbreaks. And I think you mentioned the article, like you know, overall like two people went to the hospital and and they none of them were students. You know, so a lot of people say, hey,
they got really lucky. Others say, you know, they did it right. They followed health guidance, they kept the schools open, they listened to parents, and whatnot question I have is, you know, how did the teachers feel throughout all of this, because that was one of the big conversations going around where teachers, teachers unions are saying, well, kids could be spared the worst of the virus, but the adults, the instructors aren't. So that was a big conversation. How did
teachers feel in this district? You know, it's interesting, Um, I came like I covered a lot of the teacher union sights like you know, and a lot of the teaching unions. I was say, we responding to what they felt their communities wanted, that parents wanted, and you see, cities like they see where I live. Parents didn't want to go back. So it wasn't that the unions referred so vastly from you know, every parent here, um, but here,
you know, I was surprised. I tried to talk to as many teachers as they could to really, you know, I'm sure I understood their viewpoints and most of the ones. Everyone I talked to and I didn't talk to all the teachers obviously felt comfortable going back. They felt that they they saw their kids fall behind that spring when it was virtual learning and they felt they needed to go back and they felt that it could be done safely.
You know. Some there was some teachers, you know, as they the school district admitted that there were teachers that felt that this that they didn't want to go back and left. There were some teachers so that felt that the school took too many passions. Some teachers that didn't wanted to teach with masks. At least one so he left the school system. So they were in the GANNET.
But the vast majority, I mean, they did a survey ang July, it was pretty early on in the pandemic, and the majority of teachers felt that school could be reopened safely. Um, you know, teachers, the teachers that I talked to, most of them did wear masks throughout last year and wanted to wear masks if they had to for mostly but they wanted to wear masks and still wore masks overcomplishes. So I think the teachers were fairly
on board, you know. In the end, obviously, every situation is different, and luckily for the school district it worked out well. Their students were thriving, but they did have a lot of disruptions. Obviously, there weren't times where they were just completely open. Because this happened in fall of so this is when all school districts were going crazy
hybrid this full remote learning. They decided to get classes going very early on in the pandemic still when we were there, you know, so they did have disruptions when case accounts were really going up they had to close and do remote learning. But overall, even talking a lot of those students, you know, they felt like it was kind of a normal year and that you know, probably lends itself to the argument of why they were doing so good at least with their scores and whatnot. Yeah,
it's interesting. I tried to talk to him that the students as possible and like, you know, you were asking about something for a kid that was very normal for them. So yeah, I think they felt that, at least the younger kids felt that it would felt pretty pretty well for them. That you know, some of them thought that the school because they were quarantined so much. And again their kids are not following what's happening in every other district,
um right, they only know their own. Is that I felt that they took too really precautions because they got quarantine too much at the older grades. I mean, some kids didn't get quarantined all. Some kids got quarantined multiple times. Um that put them back into virtual learning. But yeah, by and large, and again this is just a look at one school district. They don't think that everything that they did could be replicated in every other school district
or should have been. But I do think, you know, where we are in the pandemic, it's important to look at all different types of school districts and types of decisions they made and how they may it didn't totally and that's the interesting part. We're gonna be unpacking what happened throughout the pandemic for years and we're gonna look back to see what really worked, what didn't work, and you know, hopefully we can carry that into the future.
But this massive disruption that we're going to have to study this for some time and see where what we did right and what we did wrong. Perry Stein, education reporter at the Washington Post, thank you very much for joining us. Yeah, thanks so much for helping me. I'm
Oscar Ramirez and this has been reopening America. Don't forget after today's big news stories, you can check me out on the daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday, so follow us and I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast