Superintendent of Gloucester Schools Ben Lummis came on Cape Ann Today to speak with Heather Atwood about what is happening with Gloucester Public Schools. Lummis explains the changes to the mask policy and improvements in behavioral health services for students. 

Heather Atwood:

I am speaking with Gloucester superintendent of schools, Ben Lummis. We haven’t spoken in a while, Ben. It’s nice to see you again.

Ben Lummis:

Heather, it’s great to see you. Thanks for having me on. It’s just always a pleasure to be with you.

Heather Atwood:

Same. So the masks have come off, but I’m sure some kids and staff are still wearing them. Can you talk about the emotional climate in the schools, right now?

Ben Lummis:

Yeah. So I think things are going very well. So we went mask-optional, February 28, so just after we came back from February vacation. One of the major concerns there was whether or not, like we’ve had after other school vacations, would the COVID cases be going up in the city or the schools? And we found out that they weren’t at all, which is great news. Before February break, we had 11 active cases across the schools, which is a huge, huge improvement from January, just a monumental improvement when we were having dozens and dozens and dozens. And then, coming back, last week I reported to the school committee that we had five active cases on Wednesday and then a total of seven on Friday. I reported the seven to all of our school staff to let them know that there hasn’t been a surge. It’s not surging the city, that we’re off to a good start.

In terms of emotional climate, things are going very well. Both middle school and high school reported there weren’t any incidents in terms of folks teasing, joshing, cajoling, pressuring, nothing like that.

Heather Atwood:

Oh, that’s great.

Ben Lummis:

So a couple of things have come up, but nothing out of the ordinary and we’ll work on those on a case-by-case basis. We’re just really, really pleased with how folks are, I would say, taking care of each other on that. We did quite a bit of messaging. I communicated with our school families twice about it. Our principals all communicated with their school families. They talk directly to students about it. Just about the sense that we have to really respect and honor people’s choices and understand that if you’re wearing a mask, you might be doing it for lots of reasons, and if you’re not wearing a mask, you also have good reasons for not wearing a mask, and just to appreciate that and seek understanding as opposed to making a judgment. And I think that’s gone well. Yeah, I think it’s gone really well so far.

Heather Atwood:

Right. So is there any regular testing still happening in the schools?

Ben Lummis:

There’s lots of regular testing, more regular testing now than ever before. So every week, families and staff can choose to have two free weekly tests if you’re in the schools. So all staff, all students can have tests twice weekly, free. One of those is a Monday or Tuesday in the schools. That’s our weekly COVID check testing and then another one is at home. So every two weeks we give anyone who’s signed up a kit of two tests for any student or a staff member, and they take those on Friday and they report those to us if they’re positive. So you can get a test on Tuesday and Friday, every single week, if you’re part of the schools and those are both free.

Heather Atwood:

That’s great.

Ben Lummis:

We continue to make sure people know about it and continue to ask more and more people to sign up. We have over 1,400 students signed up for the free weekly at-home testing. So they’re getting tested every week at home, and we have about 420, 430 staff members out of about 630 staff members who are taking those tests every week, which I think is super important now that we have masks off and aren’t tracing. The state, the city, the schools have different approaches than earlier, and because of that, really important for folks to do regular testing. We’d like to get more and more students testing, but really pleased with how it’s going so far, and those tests have continued to show that very few folks are positive.

Heather Atwood:

That’s wonderful.

Ben Lummis:

Yeah.

Heather Atwood:

Well, let’s talk about what happened during COVID. I think one of the biggest lessons from COVID, learned the hard way, is that kids learn and thrive best in a school, actually with their peers and teachers. So can you talk about learning that lesson the past two years? I know there have been some really rough spots there when schools shut down and then there was the realization that this is not going well. Can you just talk about that a little bit?

Ben Lummis:

Yeah. Interesting, Heather, this past January probably was one of our hardest months. Honestly, it really, really was. With Omicron, with so many cases in the community and then also in the schools, it was really hard on our schools. Staffing was hit pretty hard, especially in the first two weeks. It changed rapidly once we got past the first two weeks, but also a lot of student absences. So it’s such a change to where we are right now, and in some ways, it’s kind of like whiplash. It’s March now, so it’s a month plus past that, but whether it was January or all the months preceding that, we’ve certainly learned a lot. We’ve learned that our kids, when they’re in school, they thrive on many, many levels, definitely academics, of course. Their best chance to do well for almost all of our students or most students is to be in school with our teachers, with our educational paraprofessionals, with our school leaders, learning every day and getting tremendous support.

We did a presentation last week at the school committee on elementary, K to 5, and that was about what we call learning benchmarks. So assessments we do, actually K through 8, on a regular basis to understand whether or not our instructions are working for students. Are they learning what we want them to learn? Are they making progress in literacy and math the way we want them to make progress? And a couple of things that that showed is one, that while the year started off rough, more kids in the past weren’t meeting benchmark. The growth since then has been quite significant and they’re really, really promising.

Heather Atwood:

And they started in school this year?

Ben Lummis:

Oh yeah. Yeah, they’ve been in school from day one. All across the State. Last year, Gloucester and not too many others, weren’t as much as we were. So we had a lot of time in school last year, but this year everyone started in school from the very beginning and it has been in there full-time. So the data that I have been talking about, our learning benchmarks show us that, again, kids started lower than we would expect in the beginning of the year, especially the younger grades, but then K1, 2, 3 have accelerated rapidly. There were lots of growth to catch up since then, not everybody but I’ll talk about that in a moment. And then we see a little bit more struggle in terms of catching up on fourth and fifth grades, but looking at that closely.

The other piece I want to say about thriving in school, one of the real values that I think last year was quite well, is knowing our children, and the K to 5 presentation we did last week, really showed how we look at each individual student to see how they’re progressing, whether they’re progressing, whether they need acceleration, whether they need additional support and what kind of additional support they need. That’s the sort of knowing students and knowing what they need and understanding how they’re doing, that you just can’t do if you’re not with them every day, so that crucial piece. And I’m just talking about academics.

Now we start talking about thriving socially with their peers, and that may be in the hallway with their friends, that may be after school with their friends, that might be, of course, in class with their friends, that might be doing on things like ROTC with their friends, that might be lunchtime with their friends. I could go on and on. Athletics and music, band, clubs. That’s sort of beyond academic in a way, but it’s all interactions and friendships, and where it’s about normalcy, it’s about connection, it’s about learning who I am, and being human. And so much of that happens in and around school that I think I appreciate that even more than I ever have, and I think other folks do too.

Then there’s the very tangible mental health and social-emotional learning and support that we provide in our schools. We’re doing some things this year, I think, even better than we have. Then I think the last piece is helping families thrive. We’ve said this from the beginning, what so many folks have learned is that schools operating the way they can and should, helps communities operate, and families operate the way they can and should, because if kids aren’t in school, then it’s harder for families to work.

It’s harder for families to connect because the community are school children’s families. So those different levels of a community thriving, our students getting the mental health support they need about academic learning, but then also just peer interactions. Gosh, I think we all took that for granted to some extent and really know now how powerful and essential it is. So I could go on and on about it, but so many of those pieces, just thriving on so many levels is really what we hope to help our Gloucester kids be able to do.

Heather Atwood:

Well, I think it will be really interesting to see how educational geniuses think about schools going forward having learned this, just how critical schools are for all these systems you’re talking about.

Ben Lummis:

Yeah, and I think one of the harder things for us to get a handle on very honestly is, are there learning approaches that can be different, or new, or that we can learn? I don’t think we have a good handle on that yet. And when I say we, I don’t mean to sound blustering, I mean [inaudible 00:10:37]. What were the things, the components that really made a difference? I do know that what’s interesting is group work is different and also classroom work is different or changed because we had to have kids separated by their desk, that sort of thing. Some classrooms learned that whole class lessons can be more beneficial than they have thought recently, and other ones miss desperately the kids around a small table working together. We’re doing all that now, but I don’t think the story yet has been completely written on, what did we learn about teaching instruction that we might carry forward? I think that’s still a work in progress.

Heather Atwood:

I was with some people the other night and they knew a family that had a four-year-old who was trying to do remote learning, and that kid learned right away how to put himself on mute and turn off that video. That was like the first thing he learned to do. And I’m like, “Well, where do you go from there?”

Ben Lummis:

Quite a smart kid, right?

Heather Atwood:

Right.

Ben Lummis:

Where we went from there is we required kids to be visible, is one place we went, right?

Heather Atwood:

Right. Exactly. Well, you mentioned behavioral issues, behavioral health issues, I should say. There have been some specific programs in the State. The State is really trying to encourage this, and I know in the school system you’re working on that. Do you want to talk about programs that really can support these kids?

Ben Lummis:

Yeah. I think a couple of things. So we’ve made one change in terms of, I’d say leadership this year, which is an important change because it’s helped us support our staff in a much better way, our clinical staff. So we have clinical staff, adjustment counselors, and psychologists, social workers who work with our students in all of our schools. So, Gloucester is very well-situated in staff in terms of the mental health support for students. What we didn’t have in place was a leader who really could organize and help support that clinical staff and work together, collaborate, train, and just pay attention to their practice and how they’re doing.

Amy Kamm, who’s been a long-time staff member at Gloucester High School, I elevated her to be director of social-emotional learning and mental health support this year. That was one of the smartest things I did this year, honestly, because Amy is just a great leader, instructor, long-time adjustment counselor at the high school, knows students very well, knows her staff very well. What she’s been able to do is take a look with her colleagues around a few things. Supporting students with anxiety, and we’re making a really big and important shift in that area and helping students, and oftentimes their families, move beyond a sense of avoidance.

So typically, when we think of anxiety, there’s some triggers that are causing anxiety in a child and adult, that sort of stuff. What we’ve often done in the past, this is Gloucester schools and beyond, is try to take away the cause of that anxiety. So if it’s lunchtime, for example, provide a different space for that child to have lunch. If it’s a classroom that’s causing some anxiety for any number of reasons, it could be homework, it could be the mixture of students, it could be the size of the classroom, for any number of reasons, again, try to change the classroom or move or give them an alternative for that.

What we’re learning now, or our staff is working on, is instead of how do you work with children, and sometimes with families, understand that anxiety will be with us. We’ll have difficult times. We’ll have things that cause stress for us, but how do you develop skills to deal with those and not just avoid them? And so how do you help a teacher understand the anxiety a child is having and adjust some of their practice? How do you teach a child skills for when they’re feeling anxious to count or to access skills in terms of putting it in perspective? I don’t know these skills myself, so I can’t speak to them, but the idea is that we can teach them ways of handling that stress, expecting it, and working on it rather than just avoiding it. That’s two examples, both working with our staff to understand that, and then supporting our students understanding that, that helps them develop coping mechanisms that will last well beyond their school time. So that’s really, really important.

And then the other piece is, we continue to work on developing some additional screening tools. So we’re keeping an eye on all students in terms of what are they facing? Often we may see a student who’s obviously under duress or having some challenges, but then there may be other students who are doing that more quietly and how do our staff make sure they’re tuned in, and we’re using some assessments from screeners to identify what students may need help. I mentioned the learning before. There are actually real important parallels here. We can identify students and what their learning needs are and help then develop interventions to support them. And we can do the same thing on social-emotional learning and mental health support as well. So those are two areas that we’ve been spending a fair bit of time and attention and training, to help support our students as we all work through what has been an incredibly difficult time mentally and psychologically for all of us really.

Heather Atwood:

Well, thank you so much for this conversation. It’s really lovely to hear about what’s happening behind the doors of Gloucester schools and how hard you guys are all working. So thank you.

Ben Lummis:

I was talking to someone yesterday, it was a principal actually, and he was saying just how he appreciates his principal colleagues and how they are real problem-solvers, folks who understand it’s a difficult job, but are really willing to work through it and that sort of thing. And I just feel that way about our teachers, our staff, our nurses, so many folks who’ve been challenged in so many ways, but this is a can-do place. Gloucester is, and certainly, our schools are. So I just give a lot of credit to the great people in our schools who are helping our students and our families and each other every single day. It’s a pleasure for me to work with them every day.

Heather Atwood:

Well, we thank them too, and we look forward to more conversations.

Ben Lummis:

Great. Thanks, Heather. Have a great day.

Heather Atwood:

You too.