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Letter from the Editor Dear Reader,
That’s how Martin Slagter, our Ann Arbor News education reporter, said leaders refer to the period before the pandemic that seemingly has no end in sight.
Education has never been easy. But now school administrators are dealing with COVID outbreaks; staff shortages that have caused school closings; angry reactions from parents opposed to mask and quarantine mandates; pushback against what is perceived as critical race theory, and of course, school safety in the wake of the horrific Oxford High School mass-fatality shooting spree.
In fact, hours after I talked to Marty for the Behind the Headlines podcast, he was covering a middle school being forced to close as a “safety protocol.” Schools across the state have been beset by scores of copycat threats of violence.
“It just adds to the compounding stress that's been put on school districts so far this year,” Slagter said.
Covering schools in “After Times” is stressful, too. At MLive, we have education beat writers and high school sports writers in the thick of school issues, controversies and protocol every day.
Schools are making daily decisions to stay open or go virtual. Sports have come back fully and other extracurriculars are being worked back into the mix as the age range for vaccinations is lowered. And our reporters are back in school too, reporting on what’s happening in classrooms and gyms across the state.
“The first few weeks of the pandemic were crazy – what we all were doing from our bedrooms or our home offices,” said Dylan Goetz, The Flint Journal’s education reporter. “So, it's good to be able to get out and see some faces and meet some people.”
Being back to interviewing people in person feels like Before Times, Goetz and Slagter said.
That label strikes me as poignant and sadly fitting. This pandemic has taken the measure of us all, and it shouldn’t be surprising that schools are a very visible example of the stresses we’re all feeling. They are a shared community resource that touch a lot of families personally, at a time when “community” and “family” are morphing in front of us.
It’s messy and we have no playbook for it.
“One of the biggest challenges has been trying to balance these kinds of heavy subjects and emotionally charged topics,” Slagter said. “Making sure there's representation from people who are bringing up these issues to schools, but also trying to provide context about why the school districts are doing what they're doing to try to keep staff and students safe.”
We took that kind of approach in Before Times, too. It just seems so much more consequential in After Times.
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Editor's note: I value your feedback to my columns, story tips and your suggestions on how to improve our coverage. Let me know how MLive helps you, and how we can do better. Please feel free to reach out by emailing me at [email protected].
John Hiner Executive Editor Vice President of Content Mlive Media Group
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