Norwalk City Schools to address learning loss

NORWALK — In his first week as Norwalk City Schools superintendent, Brad Cooley is focused on dealing with learning loss from the past school year when many students took online classes. Filling positions within the school district is also a focus for Cooley. "Right now we are still in the phase of finalizing personnel. We still have different positions available. There have been some internal moves and that has left some other positions open. Hopefully in another week, week-and-a-half we will have finalized all personnel in the district," Cooley said. Cooley also told the Reflector that masks will be optional in Norwalk City Schools for this upcoming school year. Students and staff are not required to wear a mask at all during the school day but will still be required to wear a mask on buses. "Families, individuals, they will get to evaluate all the factors and they will get to make their own personal choice with regards to facial coverings during the school day. Masks will be required to be worn on buses. There is a federal mandate that speaks to that with transportation. That can be looked at and decisions can be made in the future," Cooley said. COVID-19 policies and personnel aren't the only things on Cooley's mind this school year. Learning loss is going to be a big conversation throughout this school year as with many students choosing to do online schooling last year, many of them didn't learn as much as they should have. "With the remote instruction that occurred last year, there were a lot of students that chose that route, they are going to be significantly behind," Cooley said. According to a Horace Mann Educators Corporation survey, conducted in February and March of 2021 with public school K-12 educators, 53 percent of them reported significant learning loss while 44 percent reported some learning loss. Just three percent of those educators reported no learning loss at all. Superintendent Cooley plans to work with the principals in the district as well as the director of operations and the newly hired curriculum director in the district to fight this. "We are working right now with different programs to address that because we are not having remote instruction available to kids this year," Cooley said. "Every kid will be in person which I would argue is the best form of education one can get, but clearly there are going to be people that have significant needs and in some cases almost a year behind in their education." Cooley says that the programs are still a work in progress and that more specifics about these programs will be able to be released next week. The first day back to work officially for all principals in the district is coming Monday.