D21 Superintendent Talks Leadership, Listening, and Opposing Viewpoints on COVID Mandates in Schools
Editor’s Note- CCCNews took some time out to catch up with North Wasco County School District Superintendent Carolyn Bernal as she has made it through her first 6 months of working as the lead executive in charge of some 2,8000 students and 400 staff at five different schools in the district. We will roll out the interview in four parts during the next several days.
Pictured: Dr. Carolyn Bernal, Superintendent of North Wasco County School District 21
By Cole Goodwin
Welcome to Part 2 of the North Wasco County School District 21 Update with Superintendent Dr. Carolyn Bernal.
In this installment, we sit down with Bernal to talk about her listening and leadership strategy as a newcomer to the district, dealing with opposing viewpoints on Covid mandates in schools, the circumstances leading up to the recent firing of an unvaccinated employee.
Cole Goodwin: So you’ve been Superintendent for about six months now. How are things going?
Dr. Carolyn Bernal: I've been really sticking to my entry plan model of listening and leading with heavy emphasis on just listening and not necessarily making a lot of big decisions or taking a lot of action.
So, I’ve made it my focus to listen to a lot of information from a variety of perspectives. I’ve been making an effort to meet with the different constituents and community relations people and stakeholders, and engage with them. And I’ve been doing that through visiting the schools, talking to the students, talking to the staff, attending board meetings, and listening to public input.
And I listen to perspectives on what's going well with D21 and what’s not going well. And I’ve been listening to different perspectives on what their hopes for their kids and for the future of the school are.
So, I’ve just been taking in all that information and then learning from it and then leading from that perspective. I feel like that model of listening grounds me in my work and helps me better in my decision making. So, I have been making day to day decisions but also using all the information I’ve gathered to formulate long-term decisions and envision for the district and where we need to go. So, that’s it so far; it’s going well.
CG: You are new to the area and it sounds like you’re being really intentional about listening and learning what is important to the community before making any big shifts for D21. You’ve also had to hear from some pretty diametrically opposed perspectives about what is best for students when it comes to the pandemic. Can you speak to how you are balancing state legal requirements and COVID mandates with local public input and concerns?
CB: You know, I certainly respect and value people's perspectives and opinions about how they feel about this pandemic. I think this pandemic has challenged us in so many ways.
But for me and the district, the goal for this year was: let's fully reopen our schools, and let's make sure we can fully reopen for in-person learning, five days a week. And the way that we could do that was utilizing these mitigated measures like the face coverings, ventilation, physical distancing, and vaccinations.
Chenoweth Elementary School staff Kirky Stutzman, Susan Harris, and Shawna Ortega hold up signs showing what they are thankful for. Gratitudes expressed include being thankful for fabulous Chenoweth Elementary Schools students, teaching in person, and our principal and amazing staff.
There's a variety of mitigating measures that we are using. And you can't just use one. You have to use a whole toolbox to keep our doors open, to keep kids in school learning, keep them safe and keep us all healthy. And so, while I can certainly appreciate and understand that there are varying viewpoints going on and people have very different perspectives on these matters, at the end of the day, I hope we all agree that we do want what's best for our kids. And that we all want our kids in school. And we all want them learning. And we all want them safe. And we all want them healthy. And so we can agree to disagree on some of these other things.
And I think something that's important to understand is there are the OARs (Oregon Administrative Rules set by State Departments through authority from the Governor) and the ORS's (Oregon Revised Statutes set by the legislature) that direct what we do, and those are laws that we have to follow. There are repercussions for not following them and they are not to be dealt with lightly.
CG: What are some of the repercussions of not following the laws about reopening schools in a pandemic?
CB: The repercussions could be anything from loss of funding, to closing down schools, to closing down the district to teachers and administrators losing their licenses, kids getting sick and staff getting sick.
And, you know, I would hope that even though people disagree on all of these things, I would hope that at the end of the day, what we can agree upon is that nobody wants those legal repercussions to happen. And that nobody wants our schools to close. And that nobody wants any of our kids to get sick or our staff to get sick. We just want our schools open, and we want our kids in school for in-person learning.
So, I will, you know, continue to listen to different viewpoints on the pandemic.
But what I cannot do and what I will not do is: I will not ask my staff to break the law. And I will not break the law.
I will not ask people to willingly go out on a limb and risk losing the licensure that they've worked so hard for their entire life. And I won't risk children's safety and staff safety.
Because I have to think about not just one child every day. I have to think about 2,800 children's lives. And I don't have to think about just one employee. I have to think about 400 employees every day. So when I am thinking about how I'm making decisions related to the pandemic every day, that's what I'm thinking about.
Students wearing face coverings at school to protect themselves and staff.
CG: In November Wayne Gibson was fired from the school district for not complying with state COVID mandaes. And in December, teacher Erich Drorzab was fired from the district as a result of not following the state mandate for teachers to get vaccinated. Can you tell us a little about that most recent firing?
CB: So the ORS states that all staff had to be fully vaccinated by October 18th or have received an exception. And all D21 employees that requested an exception were granted an exception. But in this particular case, this employee was not fully vaccinated, nor did the employee request an exemption or exception.
I don’t ever want to see these kinds of things happen, but people do have choices.
There were options made available to all of our employees. And when the ORS was put into effect, our Human Resources Department worked extremely hard with all of our employees and met numerous times with those that didn't want to be fully vaccinated, which I completely respect. That's okay. And so there was another route where employees could apply for a medical or religious exemption. And every single employee that applied for an exception was granted one.
But again, in this particular case, this employee was not fully vaccinated nor did the employee request an exemption or exception.
CG: Keeping schools open during COVID sounds like a lot of responsibility, seems like a tough time to be a leader, even on a local scale.
CB: It’s difficult. You won’t please everybody, and it’s hard to make everybody happy. And at the end of the day, I understand that I won’t always make everybody happy. Because at the end of the day, it’s about me and my core values. And what I care about most is children and my staff, and I want to do what's best for them.
Enjoying our D21 Superintendent Update? Read the first installment to get a bird's eye view of what goes into calling a snow day at the district and stay tuned for our upcoming installment in which we cover D21 strategic planning, NWASCO D21 goals, renaming Colonel Wright Elementary School, the Dual Language Immersion Program, exciting school projects, and more.
