A New Kind Of Familiar Feeling For Danvers Schools This Fall

DANVERS, MA — It wasn't as much about the first day of school this year in Danvers as it was about the first days of school.

There was the first day of school that Danvers students reengaged on Wednesday — which was a day all students attended school remotely under the district's hybrid-learning system. Then there was the first day of school on Thursday when Danvers welcomed students back in the buildings for the first time since the onset of the coronavirus health crisis in March when "Cohort B" was in the classroom. On Monday, there will be yet another first day of school when "Cohort A" is set for in-classroom learning for the first time.

"We are looking forward to that and seeing what we learned from Cohort B, and what we need to refine," Danvers Superintendent of Schools Lisa Dana told Patch Friday morning. "We feel like we are doing everything a couple of times now because of the smaller groups."

Dana said overall "things went very well" in the first days of school in Danvers thanks to "a lot of team effort from the work over the summertime to get us to this place. A lot of the planning was in place."

She said one of the adjustments in this unprecedented time was getting everyone back on board with the computer use involved with remote learning given that many students disconnected over the summer.

"The major piece was technology," she said. "Using the technology again. There were some of those glitches as far as finding things. But we have a good system in place with our technology department and our health department, so our staff was able to respond as quickly as possible."

Like some neighboring school districts, Danvers had a bit of a laptop shortage to start the year with those who had access to a private laptop asked to use those until a back-ordered shipment arrives hopefully next month. At that time, Dana said all students should be using school-leased Chromebooks.

"It was a team effort and a lot of working together with flexibility, and now adding patience," she said. "We saw a lot of that when people were able to work together these last couple of days."

Dana said 85 percent of Danvers students are enrolled in the hybrid-learning model with 15 percent choosing to attend school fully remote. Danvers is using its own educational staff to teach remote students, which hopefully will keep the two groups on roughly the same path and timetable throughout the academic year.

Dana said the district is looking at "natural breaks" in the schedule — such as the end of quarters and vacations — as opportunities for students to shift from remote to hybrid learning, or vice versa.

"Because we were able to do (remote learning) through our Danvers teachers the curriculum is the same," she said.

While most superintendents have preached patience, and have acknowledged there are bound to be hiccups along the way in starting a school year unlike any year before, Dana said the early returns this week in Danvers were positive.

"People really were well-prepared," she said. "Parents were our partners and really willing to work together."