By: Caris Jones
In Macon County, there have been several impacts in the community in relation to COVID-19. Dr. Jacqueline Brooks, a former school superintendent and part-time employee for School Superintendents of Alabama, shares the struggles and overall process of the Macon County school system in reaction to Covid-19. In response to being asked what the school system’s initial response to Covid was, Dr. Brooke states, “It was something I had never seen before. We had no plans on how to deal with such an impactful, communicable disease. My initial thoughts were to put my head together with the county sheriff, Sheriff Bronson.” She then goes on to say, “Pre-planning was key, but we didn’t know how and what to plan for really, because there was no published guidance.” Macon County’s school systems were able to implement their masked mandates and sanitizing protocols with the help of their partnership with the Local Roses and the manager at Dollar General. She claims, “Before we kind of hit that supply chain shortage of PPE material we already had some on hand, so I think that was one of the best planning moves we made.” However, there were more issues stemming from remote learning that took place at the height of the pandemic.
When asked about some of the challenges the school system faced with remote learning, Dr. Brooks responded, “We were fortunate because, in 2015 and in 2019, we were recipients of the Apple Connect Ed grant, which had been a white house initiative under President Obama for connectivity and devices in school systems. So, we had enough iPads for all of our students, and we already had a virtual platform called ACELLUS, so that part was pretty great.” An issue Dr. Brooks said they did have was “connectivity throughout the county,” including connections to wi-fi and connections to the internet. There were also problems getting the county’s school buses all wired. However, with grants and a partnership with Inside, the county was able to install tracking software in the buses and wire them very quickly with signals.
Though this issue of connectivity has been lessened, she claims that “She doesn’t think we really made great improvements even since the beginning of the pandemic in our state and our community with connectivity,” with everyone still not having access to the internet. When asked about students’ learning capabilities during remote learning versus in person, she claims students had different levels of concentrations. “If the parents are at work, you have kids supervising kids, and some kids are serious about their work even during normal school and some aren’t. So, some are goofing off, some were playing, some wouldn’t log on. So, you had a myriad of things going on and the key thing is you had no home supervision in a lot of households… That was not ideal for anyone…It was better than not having any learning.”
Concerning Macon County’s ability to keep up with changes in the CDC and State of Alabama polices, the county certainly has a unique perspective. When directly asked, “How did the school system keep up with changes in the CDC and the State of Alabama policies?” Dr. Brooks responded, “We are so fortunate. We had a doctor in our community to volunteer to be our doctor consult and that is Dr. Dina Maxwell Stafford. She did webinars with our entire staff, she did webinars with our parents, our lead nurse; to go to Dr. Maxwell with any questions we may have. She was our advisor council through this whole process.
We also had a direct link to Dr. Scott Harris in the Alabama Department of Public Health. We had probably weekly, initially, then maybe bi-weekly webinars with him and our state department. So we had direct links with the CDC at all times.” When asked her last question, how has the school’s response changed now versus when it was at the height of Covid, Dr. Brooks stated, “We don’t identify close contact… We still have a masking mandate in our schools. The community is better regarding those things… We really enhanced our virtual platform. Every teacher was set up with a G- suite Google account… When a kid is out now, they just log on to Google classroom, get their work, and keep it moving.”
To watch this interview, click below.