TOLEDO, Ohio — Gov. Mike DeWine ordered all school buildings in the state to close because of COVID-19 one year ago. Now, school leaders are in positions they never imagined.
Washington Local Schools Superintendent Dr. Kadee Anstadt opens up about the last year of school and all the challenges her school district navigated so far.
She says she never envisioned having to make her entire district move to virtual learning.
"We literally sent an emergency email to staff. Tell your kids to take everything home. Everything, everything, everything. We kept them in school one more day, then we shut it all down," Anstadt said, reflecting on the days before they first moved to virtual learning in 2020.
What started as just a few weeks turned into the remainder of the school year and has never been the same since.
Looking back, Anstadt says the pandemic has taught her more than her entire career in education.
"We've learned everything. We've learned more than a career's worth of information in this last year that will help us better serve kids forever," she said. "We've learned that internet was a problem. And it was a problem before but we didn't know how big of a problem it was."
She tuned into every daily press conference the governor held, wondering what would come next for schools and how they would address a potential learning loss.
A year later, she believes the students will have skills like no other generation because they were forced into a crisis and had to learn how to respond.
"I think we will make up for any learning gap that was there. I think these kids learned things we could have never taught them otherwise and I think they'll be just fine," Anstadt said.
As she looks back, she says the pandemic taught her that no one is in control over any situation and will never take Zoom for granted again.
She says she is looking forward to Monday, when her district will return to school full time.