Community letter from SJISD School Superintendent Fred Woods

Fred Woods - Contributed photo

Dear Fri­day Har­bor community,

I have always loved the month of Sep­tem­ber. Many years ago, when I decid­ed to make edu­ca­tion a life-long career I saw an oppor­tu­ni­ty to broad­en my world, allow­ing me to extend beyond the lim­its of the lit­tle town where I was raised. Choos­ing edu­ca­tion as a career even­tu­al­ly led me to Fri­day Har­bor, mak­ing it the best deci­sion I ever made!

I stepped into this new role of Super­in­ten­dent in the mid­dle of a glob­al cri­sis. Though the posi­tion is new to me, the work­ing con­di­tions are famil­iar hav­ing spent the last the 13 years serv­ing this com­mu­ni­ty as a prin­ci­pal. Mar­tin Yablonovsky, our new sec­ondary cam­pus prin­ci­pal, joined us at the end of June and imme­di­ate­ly got right to work. Martin’s expe­ri­ence and thought­ful approach is exact­ly what we need to help guide us.

For me, each Sep­tem­ber means I start the annu­al school cycle again, with new and return­ing stu­dents. I look for­ward to expe­ri­enc­ing the excite­ment of the pos­si­bil­i­ties that lie ahead for each child. This year, much like every year, stu­dents and teach­ers returned refreshed and ready. As always, there is an eager­ness to get­ting back to the class­room, see­ing friends, and con­tin­u­ing an edu­ca­tion­al jour­ney. How­ev­er, the park­ing lots are emp­ty. There are no ath­let­ic con­tests or Fri­day night lights. The hus­tle and bus­tle of what we have come to view as nor­mal is just not there. Life is dif­fer­ent. This pan­dem­ic has forced all of us to live in a man­ner to which we are not accus­tomed. How­ev­er, the show must go on. For school, that means we must do our best to pro­vide a qual­i­ty learn­ing expe­ri­ence with­in the frame­work of our cur­rent real­i­ty. So we returned to school this year in a remote learn­ing mod­el. Online engage­ment will nev­er replace in-per­son edu­ca­tion, but our pro­grams this fall are great­ly improved from last spring’s emer­gency closure.

Last spring, the Dis­trict piv­ot­ed quick­ly to an online teleschool­ing mod­el to con­tin­ue to serve our stu­dents dur­ing a cri­sis. Though the whole state was sud­den­ly forced into remote learn­ing, oth­er dis­tricts floun­dered and we hit the ground run­ning. Fri­day Har­bor schools excelled. The results of the AP exams tak­en in the spring are hard evi­dence of this. One hun­dred per­cent of our Art and Com­put­er Sci­ence Prin­ci­ples stu­dents passed the exam. Six­ty-two per­cent of our Cal­cu­lus stu­dents reached the mark, four stu­dents scor­ing a lev­el 5, the high­est pos­si­ble score. Oth­er AP offer­ings such as AP His­to­ry, AP Eng­lish, and AP Sci­ence also saw great suc­cess. All this was accom­plished while we were unable to meet with stu­dents direct­ly. That says some­thing about our com­mu­ni­ty, the stu­dents, and the ded­i­ca­tion of the staff.

I know the ques­tion on everyone’s mind is “When will we return to an in-per­son mod­el?” Sim­ply put, when it is safe to do so. Local super­in­ten­dents meet with the coun­ty health depart­ment week­ly. Our Board of Direc­tors adopt­ed our reopen­ing plans in August with the under­stand­ing that we would review every nine weeks. Com­mit­tees are cur­rent­ly meet­ing to dis­cuss and plan re-open­ing. There is a lot con­sid­er, but I want you to know that we are work­ing hard to sup­port the island families.

For now, teach­ers are using the train­ing they have received to cre­ate the most mean­ing­ful expe­ri­ence pos­si­ble for the chil­dren of this island. I under­stand it is dif­fi­cult for many, but our goal is to engage stu­dents the best we can in a vir­tu­al world. Along with the improve­ment to teleschool­ing, we reimag­ined and re-launched Grif­fin Bay School, designed for fam­i­lies who need sched­ule flexibility.

This Sep­tem­ber was as “dif­fer­ent” for us as it was for every­one else across the state and through­out the nation. We are resilient, though. We will get through this. And life as we once knew it will return. Build­ings will be full of stu­dents, Fri­day night lights will blaze, and schools will cre­ate com­mu­ni­ty. When we do return to in-per­son learn­ing, we will have gained much expe­ri­ence. What will we have learned from adapt­ing to this cri­sis? What new prac­tices will we car­ry for­ward? If we find our­selves in anoth­er com­mu­ni­ty cri­sis, how can we improve our response?

As Win­ston Churchill once stat­ed, and I para­phrase, we should nev­er let a cri­sis go to waste. We can come out bet­ter than we were before. That is my hope and my goal.

Fred Woods
Superintendent
San Juan Island School District

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