NORTH ADAMS, Mass. -- The McCann Technical School Committee on Thursday decided to send a letter of commendation to the high school's staff for its accomplishments during the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

There were plenty of reasons to be proud.

 

Principal Justin Kratz gave a detailed presentation to the committee, explaining how the teachers, staff and students battled through the pandemic and, perhaps, came out a little stronger on the other side.

 

"When I think of the changes we had to adapt to because of the pandemic -- there were some fields impacted heavily and there were others that were more fortunate, but when you look at education, it was one of three, four, maybe five fields where literally every facet of the operation changed across the board," Kratz said. "Our faculty was just awesome.

 

"There were challenges for sure, but the positivity and attitudes and investment in the building was unbelievable."

 

It all paid off in one of the areas where it matters most: students' grades.

 

Speaking to the regional committee at its first in-person meeting since the start of the pandemic, Kratz started by talking about the initial adjustment the school community made to remote learning when Gov. Charlie Baker closed the commonwealth's schools in March 2020, initially for two weeks.

 

"The teachers got right to it," he said. "During those two weeks, we didn't want the kids to sit around with nothing to do. Voluntarily, our teachers started creating enrichment activities, without any [memorandum of agreement] or real discussions. The attitude was, ‘What can we do to keep the kids from going nuts for two weeks?'"

 

Like schools throughout the state, McCann adjusted to the realities of remote learning and the particular challenges that came with teaching a population that includes students in remote areas underserved by Internet access. And then it whipsawed back to in-person instruction for the last month of the 2019-20 school year, creating a new master schedule to figure out how to keep kids in the building and socially distanced, Kratz said.

 

"That created a whole other challenge," he said. "It was a huge, huge curve ball for our teachers, and they adapted and adjusted."

 

Teaching and learning continued to be a challenge as the 2020-21 school year opened, and the strain started to show in the fall, Kratz said.

 

"At the end of quarter one, 25 percent of our students were failing at least one class," he said. "Talking to some of my colleagues in the eastern part of the state, that's not high, but that's astronomical for McCann. … By the end of the year, 4.2 percent of our kids were failing one class. Our teachers worked with these kids. We were patient, diligent, made accommodations and understood what they were going through.

 

"To give you some perspective, in the three years before COVID, our average end of the year number was 3.6 percent [of the student body failing a class]. To come out only with a .6 percent increase, that's an incredibly small increase during incredibly difficult conditions."

 

Spurred by the pandemic, Kratz said the school was able to accelerate a long-contemplated plan to acquire Chromebooks for each of the students and was able to procure 630 of the devices to make McCann Tech a 1-to-1 school.

 

"It was a very useful tool in the pandemic, but it's going to be an awesome thing for the school going forward," Kratz said.

 

"We had a lot of professional development [for the faculty]. These are things that are going to benefit our school long term, too, which is exciting."

 

Kratz praised the school's cafeteria staff for keeping students fed with more than 75,000 meals served over the course of the last year and the custodians for keeping up with the extra hygiene protocols required by the pandemic.

 

"We also have the colonel," Kratz said, referring to Superintendent James Brosnan. "Everything we needed, he was like, 'Just get it done. Tell me what you need.' He was patient with all the faculty, whatever they needed to get through the year. He supported [Director of Student Services Kristin Steiner] and [Assistant Principal] Keith Daigneault and myself.

 

"Without the support of Jim, we would have been dead in the water."

 

Brosnan reflected the praise back on Kratz and the rest of the administration.

 

"I can think of no other team I'd trust to do this," Brosnan said of the pandemic adjustments. "It's easy to be the resource guy when you have planners who tell you what they need. We were able to do that because of their creativity."

 

After Kratz' presentation, the committee gave him a round of applause and Chair Gary Rivers of North Adams suggested that the body draft a letter of commendation to the staff.

 

"Needless to say, that's a phenomenal effort," said Rivers, who was re-elected chair during Thursday's meeting. "Just the fact that you had to keep creating schedules. It's difficult enough to create one master schedule for the year, never mind four or five and having them roll out as need be.

 

"That's a remarkable achievement in itself, not to mention everything going on with professional development. Teachers are not trained to teach in this method, they never have had to do a remote situation. That underscores the level of professionalism we have in our faculty, staff and administration."