Dunkirk High School and all its elementary schools were in the same boat.

Our current situation, as Fredonia Superintendent Jeffrey Sortisio said, is “unprecedented.”

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, school districts across all of New York state are being forced to send all students home for an extended period of time. Teachers, meanwhile, have been instructed to provide the students with learning packets and other lesson plans for the students to do at home during their extended vacation.

The decree by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to close schools on Sunday afternoon may have caught several districts off guard. Fortunately for Fredonia, Sortisio and his staff had prepared the week prior for that exact circumstance.

Dunkirk High School was open for students to pick up packets of instruction from 8 to 11:30 a.m. Tuesday. OBSERVER Photo.

“We started thinking last week about what materials we could provide students so they’d have some learning experience during extended break,” he said. “We had to mobilize yesterday, and make sure the mindset of both teachers and the district were in right place.”

Sortisio and the rest of the Fredonia staff started to plan for the worst in the week leading up to the schools actually being closed. Because of this, the school was able to devise a clean, concise system that made the lives of both students and faculty as easy as possible given the difficult scenario.

From 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, students and parents walked into Fredonia High School where they would check in at a desk where every student’s name was listed. The desk was operated by different faculty and staff at Fredonia, and a majority of the Fredonia staff was on hand. The students were then be escorted to the gym by a teacher where they would find their packet and other material laid out on the gym bleachers in alphabetical order. There was also a desk inside the gym with extra notebooks, pencils, and other school supplies if students needed them. The system was concise and efficient, showing Fredonia’s preparation leading up to the events of the beginning of the week: A system which Sortisio credits his entire staff.

“It was an incredible scene as our whole staff, teacher aides, teachers, custodial staff, food service, administrators, were working together at rapid pace,” Sortisio said. “We had a print shop running nonstop for several days, and our organization was really impressive so that each student, K-12, has each individual packet that covers all subjects.”

This change is abnormal enough that Sortisio anticipates it will have a strange and lasting impact on both faculty and students. With the staff, the lack of communication and interaction with the students will be saddening shift for the people who care about kids.

“The biggest thing right now is the emotionality of our staff,” Sortisio said. “We won’t see students for a while, and we don’t know what a while looks like. The best educators are those who care deeply about children and we have that here at Fredonia. That’s been the hard part for folks is realizing we won’t see the students for a while, and we’ll be worrying about them.”

Despite the isolation, the Fredonia staff has done their best to ensure that students still get the best learning experience possible, and the district has gone a long way in ensuring the maximum success of their students, without going too far ahead.

“We asked for our teachers to put together material to maintain where our students are,” Sortisio said. “We’re trying to get out of the mindset of having to teach this curriculum, or having to get to this point in time, or worrying about an exam down the road. We can’t do that right now.”

“Some of our classrooms have greater online capabilites than others,” Sortisio continued. “As a district, we’re moving toward making sure all of our students have individual devices. Our middle school students all got sent home with individual devices and we did a survey of our community to find out about their own personal devices and whether they needed one. Our teachers will organize check ins with students to make sure they are OK and to know we’re still here and giving our support.”

One of the other services Fredonia will provide during the extended break is grab-and-go lunches. For students who qualify for free or reduced lunch from Fredonia High School, both breakfast and lunch will be provided between 10:30 a.m. and noon. Students can come Monday through Friday in those hours for “the forseeable future,” according to Sortisio.

Distribution of Grab & Go meals also are being offered in the city of Dunkirk. Distribution will take place from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and is anticipated to continue as long as school is closed for COVID-19. However, distribution will not be offered during the two week school break scheduled April 6 to 17.

Sites where meals can be picked up and taken home for consumption are:

≤ High school — Front Entrance on Sixth Street

≤ Middle school — Back Entrance on Swan and Fifth Streets

≤ School 3 — Loading dock on Monroe Street.

≤ School 4 — Cafeteria door near playground

≤ School 5 — Cafeteria door near loading dock on Brooks Avenue

≤ School 7 — Cafeteria door in bus loop on Several St.

In addition to the faculty and staff, the students will obviously face severe changes as well. In addition to a much different learning experience, many of the other things students do and other milestones they achieve will be different from a normal year.

“When students hear ‘extended snowdays,’ they get excited at first,” Sortisio said. “Then they realize there are a lot of positive things that happen here in terms of our activities, our athletics, our school musical which is postponed, and the day to day interaction with their peers and teachers. It’s been hard on them as well. You think about our seniors who now have a very different end to their senior year. We don’t know if some of those mile stone events will take place, we want them to, but for the safety of our community, it’s paramount we exercise caution.”

One small break Fredonia catches is their spring break schedule. Fredonia is one of three schools in Chautauqua County that have a two-week spring break, with Dunkirk being another one. Fredonia, which has a scheduled spring break is in just over two weeks, may only lose two to three weeks of classroom instruction while other schools may lose more. As for what may happen if the break extends past the spring break, Sortisio wants to take it chunks of time at a time.

“If we go well beyond spring break, we’ll have to bring the staff together to talk about what instruction could look like for an extended period,” Sortisio said. “I’ve asked the staff to work in chunks of time, we should get to spring break, then if we have to reassess, we will.”

Sortisio prepares his district for an “unprecedented” situation, and the most obscure thing he has faced in his three-year tenure as superintendent. In fact, Sortisio thinks that no matter the length of his tenure, nothing would rival this pandemic in terms of irregularity.

“This is my third year and I think if I was the superintendent for the last 50 years I could say nothing like this has ever happened,” Sortisio said.

Interim Dunkirk schools Superintendent Sylvia Root said teachers in her district are being required to stay informed during this extended break. “Our staff members are asked to check email every 24 hours in order to keep informed of the ever-changing emergency situation in New York state,” she said. “I am asking that families please check our website or Facebook as we continue to work on their students’ instructional program.”