LEWISTOWN — With Gov. Tom Wolf’s Thursday morning announcement that all Pa. schools would remain closed for the duration of the academic year, some reactions have been to understandably wonder how this will affect their children’s education and overall school experience — especially for high school seniors scheduled to graduate.

But local school district superintendents want to reassure the public that the havoc COVID-19 has wrought on the calendar will not impact the academic status of their students.

“No and no,” Mifflin County School District superintendent James Estep said when asked if the closure would cause students to repeat grades or seniors to not graduate. “We’re going to do everything we can within reason to try to help ensure kids can continue to move on with their cohort groups, but the key phrase is ‘within reason.’ We have not yet ruled out, but not yet had formal conversations about offering some kind of summer learning for catch-up or remediation. … The one upside of (Gov. Wolf) making the announcement is it does help us as a leadership team because we are no longer making short-term contingency plans.”

His response echoed that of many of his nearby colleagues.

“Presently, both of those things, students will move forward. Be they a high school senior where they will be eligible for graduation, students at other grade levels, as long as their work at this point makes them eligible to move forward, they will,” Juniata County School District superintendent Gary Dawson said. “The COVID-19 issue won’t cause students to fail or to not graduate.”

“Each school district was charged with coming up with a continuity of education plan,” Greenwood School District superintendent Nicholas Guarente said. “We had already been preparing for the closure to remain indefinite and to extend through the end of the school year.”

“Wherever we were when we did grades — our last day was March 13 and our marking period would have ended March 18 — we finalized third marking period grades,” Mount Union Area School District superintendent Amy Smith said. “Right now continuing forward, whoever was passing at that point in time, they will move forward. If anyone is failing, what we had discussed is we will get with teachers and see what needs to be done for those students and reach out to those students.”

“If you go on to (the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s) website, they have Q-and-As for coronavirus,” Midd-West superintendent Richard Musselman said. “When it comes to graduation, kids will graduate, kids will not repeat grades. We will be looking at their grades up to March 13 and whatever their GPA is, we will figure that out.”

Musselman also stated that there will be opportunities for students in his district to complete remedial work needed in order to pass.

Most school districts have already established varying degrees of remote learning — not necessarily online classes, but at least school work compiled by teachers that students are able to work on at home with the assistance of their parents. A key challenge to overcome; however, is differing technology amongst students.

“One of the things for us is trying our best to make things fair for all students,” Musselman said. “Not all students have access to technology. Some have high-speed internet and some don’t. We’re trying to do the best we can do to educate kids during this time period. I know it can be frustrating for people, but we’re learning how to accommodate and get through this like they are.”

“We are committed to continuing our efforts to provide deeper review and enrichment, as we have already begun to do and we will continue that through our regularly-scheduled end date of June 1,” Estep said.

“We do have a continuity of education plan in place,” Dawson said. “Students are being provided with enrichment and review activities. We hope families are out there working on them.”

“Our understanding is we are to continuing with continuity of education plans up to the end of our calendar year on May 29, we are going to proceed as we have been having by April 30 the students that are (Advanced Placement) finish with that course work and everyone else finished in enrichment and review,” Smith said.

The other unintended consequence of the closure is the potential impact on instruction for next school year, even if it begins as scheduled in August. Despite the best efforts of administrators and teachers to provide continuing education, students will have difficulty covering the same amount of material they would have if the school year had not been truncated.

That will present educators with the challenge of adjusting their curriculum once normal instruction resumes.

“As for next year, we hope we will be back to school as normal,” Dawson said. “Obviously we understand students may come back with some deficiency, so we will obviously be preparing for that. We may have to do some activities, but we feel we may be able to move ahead and catch up.”

“Absolutely we’re going to have to re-look at content area, especially at elementary levels,” Musselman said. “There will be a significant amount of content areas we won’t be able to cover the way we want to cover these. We may have to go back to prior year and cover things we would have done then. I think all schools will have to go back and re-look at everything that was missed that fourth quarter.”

“There’s going to have to be strong consideration given to whatever academic opportunities were offered between the closure and the end of year,” Guarente said. “We need to be cognizant of what students need for next year and for each individual kid that will be different. I can’t anticipate (the start of next school year) will be the normal difference going from grade to grade. It will have a different starting point based on what the students need.”

“I would assume when we start the school year, it will entail some reteaching of a bit of what they had missed,” Smith said. “With us going out at the end of the third marking period anyway, all that is left for us was fourth marking period. Had we been in session, three weeks would have been PSSA testing and two weeks would have been Keystone testing. The fourth marking period — the moving forward of education — a lot of times you have a only a couple weeks you have the opportunity to teach students.”

“The game plan is we will be spending a lot of time over the next few weeks to develop a long term plan and develop alternative plans for milestone events and so on,” Estep said.

The other main concerns are less instructional and more in the rites of passage category as it pertains to high school students — mainly prom and graduation. All the schools expressed a desire to hold a commencement ceremony once the academic year has concluded, provided it is safe to do so.

“We have discussed it as (Huntingdon County) superintendents as well,” Smith said. “As a district we’ve discussed it and there’s nothing official at this point, but what we are foreseeing we’d like to do is we would still like to have some type of graduation ceremony. The prom is something we’d also like to do. Nothing is going to occur until the stay-at-home order is lifted and the fact that there can only be so many people in a gathering. … The earliest we can have it we’re going to have it. Our hands are just tied to when we can open schools up to gatherings.”

Smith also said that the school district would inquire with the Lake Raystown Resort, which was scheduled to be the site of Mount Union’s prom to gauge its availability throughout the summer in an effort to reschedule the prom.

“Those discussions had started to take place with the anticipation we would not return to school this year,” Guarente said. “Nothing concrete is planned as of yet, but I imagine it will be collaboration. We will try to make it the best we can under the circumstances and guidelines at the time.”

“As far as planning for other significant types of milestone events that occur in an normal year, we are reconvening our leadership team after Easter weekend to begin working on alternate plans,” Estep said. “Whatever we do we need to ensure we are complying with the Department of Health and what happens will largely depend on the federal and state response in regards to lifting social distancing and other requirements related to health and safety. We will know that better once we can reconvene as a group.”

“Our position is there will be a commencement ceremony,” Dawson said. “We may have to push that back when it arrives. What we’re looking at right now are senior activities. We will make an attempt to reschedule until we can’t. We’re going to try when feasible as we can. As far as commencement and a graduation ceremony goes, we have the full intention to hold that ceremony for those students, but we’re going to have to try to do that under the constraints within the situation we’re in.”

“We will be looking at creative ways to conduct ceremonies,” Musselman said. “We feel it’s important to celebrate the achievements of students. We don’t have plans figured out yet. We have been talking about this, anticipating the governor’s announcement. We are looking at creative ways to celebrate their graduation. There is no deadline to have a graduation ceremony. It doesn’t matter when. It really is about us a community coming together to celebrate the accomplishments of our students.”

As far as Midd-West’s prom, Musselman seemed less optimistic.

“Our prom was scheduled for the end of April. As we both know, the stay-at-home order goes to the end of April, so we did have to cancel our prom,” Musselman said. “I know some people were upset with that but the governor’s order goes to the end of April. … We will look at possibly rescheduling something in the future. Principals have been talking about what we may be able to do. People were upset and angry almost at the decision, but this is at a time where none of us can imagine anything that is happening. We are trying to support the leadership of the country, and the leadership of the state.”