Letter to the Editor

Wallkill School District’s COVID response

By Patrick Robisch, Wallkill Class of 2020, Modena
Posted 7/23/20

In the time after schooling under COVID-19 I have had some time to think about how my experience in my Senior Year at Wallkill Senior High School. Wallkill School District was exceptionally well …

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Letter to the Editor

Wallkill School District’s COVID response

Posted

In the time after schooling under COVID-19 I have had some time to think about how my experience in my Senior Year at Wallkill Senior High School. Wallkill School District was exceptionally well prepared for this pandemic. This is true because of the implementation of the 1:1 Chromebook Initiative.

This was a policy that gave every student a Chromebook and access to the internet. The district also made Office 365 accounts and started using an online classroom called Schoology. These resources were used by many teachers leading into the pandemic. This gave many students experience that allowed them to work from home when the time came. This was a unique advantage that other school districts, especially those in similar size to Wallkill, did not have.

I have heard from other people that their students either did not have access because of no computer, or they had a very complicated system. In Wallkill, there was one log-in for both Office 365 and Schoology and was simple to navigate. Some other school districts had up to 7 different logins because each teacher had their own solution to remote learning; it was not organized. The leadership of Wallkill was clear from the beginning of what the teachers could do and how much work should be given. Even when every student was online during quarantine the servers only crashed once for about 20 minutes.

Mainly I wanted to commend Wallkill School District for their continued efforts and excellent handling of the confusing situation. This is not true for many other districts that are not up to date and made virtual learning for students very difficult.