Cummings on the pandemic school year: ‘I was surprised at how much we got right’

With the hindsight of a year and three months, Superintendent of Schools Jay Cummings is finally able to take a deep breath — without a mask — and assess how the schools responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I was surprised at how much we got right,” Cummings admitted to the School Committee Tuesday. “The fact that we were working together, relentlessly, held up very well.”

In March 2020, a state of emergency forced families home — children, because schools were shuttered; parents, because their companies either moved to a work-from-home model or laid off employees. Caught in the middle were public schools, which had to develop remote learning programs, as well as supply computers to students who lacked home technology.

School Committee Chair Amy Marr noted that Cummings was hands-on with the challenge from the start, taking time to personally deliver computers to students.

“You’re the kind of leader who is in the trenches with everyone else, but that makes people respond the way that they do,” Marr said.

Cummings praised the work of school staff, from the custodians who kept surfaces scrupulously clean in accordance with Covid protocols, to teachers who adapted to hybrid learning, to Temporary Town Administrator Carter Terenzini and Town Administrator Evan Brassard to their support throughout the past school year.

He especially highlighted the school nursing staff serving on the Covid front lines.

“I can’t tell you how many nights they were up until 9 or 10 at night doing contact tracing,” he said.

The school department also created a Facebook page specifically for people to ask questions — and with 6,000 parents, that’s a lot of questions, he said.

“If there is one person who was the glue for the last year, it was Kristen Gasper,” he added, referring to the assistant superintendent of human resources and operations. “If all these people knocked it out of the park, she was the one who kept the park together.”

Looking to the fall, Cummings said state guidelines so far do not indicate masks will be required. Students will be assessed to get “a quick snapshot of where students stand.”

“I believe the actions that we’ve taken last year… set us up for the challenges of the next year,” Cummings said.

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