Staff Cut In Half: Where Are All The Staff Members

The understaffing at Carver during the 2021-2022 school year has been due to Covid-19 and other obstacles. 

Almost everyone at Carver has noticed the decrease in attendance of students and teachers. Sophomore Steve Jackson is concerned about rates of testing and how that impacts student attendance and the spread of the virus. 

“I feel like it’s sad because their families have to handle it now just because some students didn’t want to be tested" Steve said. "I feel like that we’re handling this the best that we can at the moment.”

Even though we as a school are going through a hard time right, not everyone thinks the situation was handled perfectly. Some people like sophomore, Braylon Edmondson, believe it was handled less than adequately. 

“Well obviously no one could have predicted the teachers being out," Braylon said. “When I come into class I expect to see my teacher for that class but when I see another teacher I feel uneased. Like, say I go into math class and see my English teacher. I know they won’t be able to help me as much as the normal teacher. Overall, they should not be trying to make this the new normal.”

Sophomore, Talaya Johnson, thought that it would be easier now that some of the teachers were out but that was not the case. 

“I thought this would be like a vacation but they are still giving us work and I feel overwhelmed.” “They [the teachers] can’t help being sick, so they have a good reason to be out. I am not sure how it can be helped because no one has all the answers at the moment.”

We now know how the students feel about the issue but how do the remaining teachers feel about the situation? How do they think the situation could have been handled better? Carver chemistry teacher, Alexander Leed, thinks the overall situation was handled very poorly.

“I know that they said that we need at least 10% of people to be out for us to go virtual but we should have probably gone virtual before that. On a good day, a good chunk of the class is present but usually there are multiple people out. I know the school district doesn’t want schools closing down but it just might be necessary.”

I went to Carver AAH teacher, Elaine Kuoch, to get my final response on the issue.

“I feel as if we need to have more safety precautions if they [the school district] want us to stay open and continue working as teachers. Also, they could be more lenient with their absence policy around Covid-19. If a person who is vaccinated gets told to be out of school for a day or two comes back to unexcused absences, it doesn’t seem fair to the student.”