Back to school: Districts face learning gaps, mental health concerns, attendance problems

As more than 400,000 Long Island public school students return to classrooms for the new academic year, educators said their priorities are to address learning gaps, mental health concerns and attendance problems that remain from the pandemic years.

A handful of school districts opened their doors last week, but students in most of the Island’s 124 districts return for the 2023-24 year in the days ahead.

The year kicks off as the second consecutive without COVID-related restrictions, and educators are optimistic but cautious.

“We’re going to be dealing with learning loss and certain social, emotional issues for the years to come,” East Hampton schools Superintendent Adam Fine said.

More than 17 million students nationwide have experienced more than half a year of learning delays, according to a recent analysis by global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. The rate of chronic absenteeism, a term that defines serious student absence, doubled in recent years. The most recent data, from 2021-22, showed 1 in 5 students on the Island missed a month or more of school.

“There were certain things that over the past several years we had to just take a breath and be patient with, you know, learning loss and all the challenges and trauma associated with the pandemic,” Patchogue-Medford schools Superintendent Donna Jones said.

Districts like Jones’ also face the challenges of securing schools, both the buildings themselves and online. Then there’s staffing the buildings and keeping the buses running — not to mention trying to figure out what to do about the rise of artificial intelligence and its role in the classroom.

While pandemic recovery might be at the forefront of educators’ minds, Gov. Kathy Hochul reminded New Yorkers last week that “COVID-19 isn’t done with us.” After a summer of rising hospitalizations and reports of a new variant, she recommended schools review current CDC guidance, which recommends they promote vaccination and testing, as well as encourage people to stay home when sick.

COVID-19 hospitalizations on the Island were about half of what they had been about a year ago, but educators said they are keeping a close eye on state guidance and are prepared to pivot if needed.

“We know what to do if it does happen that we have to lock down,” Hempstead schools Superintendent Regina Armstrong said. “It’s not new anymore, right? So we all have those practices that we can quickly put back in place.”

Despite the challenges, educators and students said they are ready.

Sasha Kleinberger, 12, will start seventh grade at Cold Spring Harbor Jr./Sr. High School on Tuesday. “I’m excited to be in a new place, meeting new people,” she said at orientation last week.

Amy Lederer, principal of Leo F. Giblyn Elementary School in Freeport, said she felt “optimistic and eager.”

“I love the start of school,” she said. “It’s like new beginnings.”

Jones, the Patchogue-Medford superintendent, is hopeful that “we can get back to the business of learning.”

Here’s the latest on some of the issues facing students and educators as they return.

Funding

Schools are getting a record boost in state financial aid — more than $770 million in fresh funding, with a particular focus on districts that need help the most. The federal pandemic-relief dollars, however, will be winding down by next fall.

The extra state money is the final installment of a historic three-year package totaling more than $1.6 billion for the Island’s districts. Funds were approved by state lawmakers, under an agreement with Hochul.

The financial assistance, which comes to schools mostly in the form of “foundation” aid, is meant to ensure even the poorest systems have enough money to provide students with the “sound basic” education required by the state’s constitution.

Overall, state assistance pays for about 30% of school spending in the region, which will total $15.1 billion in 2023-24. State money is in addition to hundreds of millions of dollars in federal pandemic-relief money that must be budgeted by Sept. 30, 2024, and spent within the following 120 days.

In Uniondale, Superintendent Monique Darrisaw-Akil said federal relief money has been especially helpful in paying for improvements ranging from upgraded ventilation systems to teacher training to purchases of laptop computers and tablets for the district’s 6,200 students.

This year, Uniondale will be spending additional funds for curriculum upgrades and a new science textbook series, bringing the total federal relief contribution to about $20 million.
“Some of those investments are going to really keep us in a good place for a long time,” Darrisaw-Akil said.

Learning gaps

In many cases, educators face a long road in catching up students.

An average student will need the equivalent of more than four months of schooling, on top of their regular school time, to catch up in reading and math, according to a July report.

Middle and high schoolers, in general, need more instruction time to make up for the gaps than elementary schoolchildren do, according to the report by NWEA, a Portland, Oregon-based research organization that also administers assessments in K-12 schools..

Researchers noted the additional schooling should not be compressed into a one-shot intervention or single school year but spread over several years in “a sustained and comprehensive effort.”

Fine, the East Hampton schools superintendent, said his district has not looked to extend the school day but to refine its teaching within it.

“It’s very easy to say more is better,” he said. “You can look at it in a different way and say the quality of what you have within that time is important.”

With the increase in foundation aid, Wyandanch schools hired 16 more academic intervention services, or AIS, teachers this year.

“We utilize a co-teaching model where they push in and provide parallel teaching,” said Shamika Simpson, assistant to the superintendent for curriculum and instruction in Wyandanch.

“We also allow for our AIS teachers to pull out a small group for the most at-risk scholars,” said Simpson, adding that those students receive increased instruction at least three to four times a week in a small group setting.

Other districts have taken a similar approach.

Patchogue-Medford schools this year nearly doubled its intervention services teachers in math, from 12 to 21, at its elementary schools and hired five more reading specialists districtwide, said Lori Cannetti, district assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction.

“We know if we can get some of those additional [supports] and make some class sizes at six or seven to really focus on the standards and skills and really do targeted intervention, it’s very effective for students,” she said.

Mental health

The issue spiked during the pandemic and remains a top priority for educators.

Schools continue to hire more counselors, social workers and psychologists, even as they increase collaboration with community-based counseling agencies for emergency and ongoing therapy, said Bob Vecchio, executive director of the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association.

Educators also are being trained in “mental health first aid,” in which they’re taught to identify and respond to signs of mental health challenges among young people, he said.

Lamont E. Johnson, Hempstead’s school board president, said educators underwent training this summer on “restorative practices,” which teaches them to favor communication rather than punishment to solve conflicts among students.

“We want to minimize suspensions. We want to keep students in school as much as possible,” Johnson said. “We want to look beyond just the surface behaviors and ask, say, are kids hungry and whether things are OK at home.”

Educators said they still see troubling psychological remnants from the pandemic, such as some students experiencing “school avoidance.” The term refers to the long period that students spent away from school during the pandemic, and some students’ resistance to return to the brick-and-mortar world of academia, said Kristen White, executive director of pupil and personnel services at the Rocky Point district.

Chronic absenteeism spiked on the Island and nationwide during the pandemic. Some Island districts had improvements in the 2021-22 school year, according to the most recent state data. But others saw the trend continue to worsen.

This school year, Rocky Point will have “sensory rooms” in all four of its buildings. They are rooms where students can relax if they feel anxious, White said.

“If they have anxiety, they can decompress,” she said, adding that the rooms contain toys and activities for young students, and soothing sounds such as ocean waves and journaling activities for older students.

Staffing

While shortages are not as severe as during the pandemic and immediately afterward, district officials said they are still having difficulty hiring staff, especially those who keep the classrooms and buildings running.

Teacher assistants, nurses, aides, custodians, cafeteria workers, lunch monitors, bus drivers and special education teachers are among the roles cited by educators as a struggle to fill.

Maria Rianna, president of the Nassau County Council of School Superintendents, said colleagues have told her that while the bus driver shortage has eased, there is still a need in several districts.

“In some districts, we are hearing that it is better. But do we all feel secure? No,” said Rianna, who is also the Glen Cove schools superintendent. “We are still looking for drivers in various districts with various companies.”

Special education teachers also are in great demand, she said. Due to late resignations and people moving, her district, like others on the Island, is still looking for monitors and assistants.

Rianna encouraged candidates to apply for open positions by checking district websites.

In Merrick, “We are having issues with all the support personnel — aides, monitors, teaching assistants,” Superintendent Dominic Palma said.

Palma said he has heard from colleagues in his region that school nurses have been hard to find and hire.

“It’s my understanding that hospitals are paying well over $100,000, where schools are not paying anything close to that,” he said.

In the child care service industry, staffing has become so difficult that a local nonprofit for the first time flew a “help wanted” advertisement from the back of a banner plane over local beaches this summer, in addition to holding job fairs and advertising in media and on billboards.

George Duffy, executive director of Smithtown-based SCOPE Education Services, which provides before- and after-school care in dozens of districts, said about 7,000 children are enrolled in those programs, with about another 1,300 on wait lists due to staff shortages.

“We always had some staff shortages in the child care industry. And it seems that post-pandemic, it has really gotten worse,” Duffy said.

Cybersecurity and security

It’s no longer a question of whether school districts will suffer a cyberattack, but when, said Alex Goldberg, the Plainview-Old Bethpage district’s director of technology.

“There will be some malicious actions,” he said. “It’s a matter of limiting the potential scope of the damage.”

To that end, Island districts have been securing their computer networks and training staff to spot suspicious emails that could introduce a virus or ransomware attack, which could cripple systems that control a multitude of daily operations.

At Plainview-Old Bethpage, staff has implemented a network access control device, which makes sure the system is familiar with a computer or device before allowing entry, Goldberg said.

Cybersecurity experts said the weakest link in a district’s protection is often human errors, so training continues for staff to identify emails or links that may look safe but aren’t. Plainview-Old Bethpage is among numerous districts that send out their own links and emails to staffers to test them, Goldberg said.

The district is also decentralizing the systems that control various functions, such as emails, phones, finances and attendance, so if one is attacked the others will remain protected, Goldberg said.

Island schools also are acting to enhance the physical security of students, staff and buildings.

The Elwood district plans to add armed security guards districtwide this school year, interim Superintendent Kelly Fallon said. She said bids are being reviewed and the district aims to implement this in the fall. The number of armed guards has yet to be determined, Fallon said.

The Franklin Square district has expanded its security staff from one guard in each of its three building to two in recent years, Superintendent Jared Bloom said.

Franklin Square also has moved the playground at John Street Elementary School closer to the school building. Officials were concerned because the playground had been near the rear areas of stores, Bloom said.

“We didn’t want the kids so close to where others could talk to them,” he said.

Artificial intelligence

Island educators said they expect the use of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence writing apps, which can instantly produce essays from a single prompt, to be more prevalent this school year.

These apps bring an uncomfortable mix of hopes and fears, from worries students will use them to cheat, to hopes educators can employ the apps as learning tools in class, educators said.

“I think that at [middle and high school] level, teachers will be trying to figure out whether a student’s content is original work,” said Vecchio, of the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association.

Kusum Sinha, superintendent for the Garden City district, said she does not favor banning ChatGPT, though she noted students are unable to access it from their school Chromebooks due to student privacy concerns.

She pointed out that young people are surrounded by the tools of artificial intelligence, from simple Google searches to using Amazon’s Alexa, an interactive app that can act on voice commands to control home devices and play music.

“It’s here,” she said. “It’s embedded in everything. … The key is how to use it responsibly.”

Free meals

More Island districts can offer free meals to all students this school year, thanks to an influx of more than $134.6 million in state funding for breakfast and lunch programs statewide.

During the pandemic, schools across the nation offered universal meals to all students — regardless of income — under changes made by the federal government. But that program ended at the start of 2022-23.

The $134.6 million included in the fiscal 2024 state budget will now expand access for free meals to children through a new Community Eligibility Provision State Subsidy. Districts had to apply and show the need to the state Education Department by Aug. 31. The provision is a federal reimbursement option that allows high-poverty schools and districts to provide breakfast and lunch at no charge. The state subsidy makes up a funding gap in the program, state officials said.

In approved schools, families will no longer have to submit applications to participate in a free or reduced meal program.

“It is a good step forward,” Vecchio said. The group has been advocating for universal meals and will continue to do so, he said.

A list of newly eligible districts was unavailable, but Huntington, South Huntington and the Southampton districts have reported they will serve free meals this school year.

“Financially, it is a huge help,” said Regan G. Kiembock, director of Food Services in Southampton schools.