Juneau, Alaska (KINY) – During the weekly Juneau Chamber of Commerce luncheon on Thursday, candidates for the Juneau Board of Education were asked about student recovery and rebound after e-learning Last year.

Topics covered included tax issues, teacher retention and, of course, COVID-19.

Chamber moderator and board member John Blasco asked candidates who, given the year Juneau had of 2020 being online, what are their thoughts on how they can recover / bounce back children to make sure they get the full education they need and experience. move forward in class and in person.

Ibn Bailey, co-owner of Alaska Tea House, said he believes schools should bring in professionals

“I think when we look at incorporating professionals into our schools, such as counselors or psychologists or teachers or instructors, who can help children with treatment, as needed, when you start to see some of the results about the lockdown that we ‘ve had and distance learning. The kids are starting to get to know their peers again and are very excited, and some kids come back with other concerns as well. I think we have professionals here to actually help with the treatment of what happened would be positive. “

Elizabeth Siddon, Fisheries Research Biologist at NOAA and current Chair of the Board of Directors, stressed the importance of face-to-face learning

“Resuming distance learning under COVID is our top priority, and the way the school board and district is approaching this is to keep our kids in the classrooms, in person with their teachers. We know that is. is where they learn best, and we know this is the best place for them for their socio-emotional health as well as with their peers, ”Siddon said.

Thom Buzard, a longtime semi-retired resident of Juneau, said he believes the best way to recover is to work long hours and work hard,

“I look at it from a business perspective, in some cases you can’t perceive the loss of income or the loss of production. In other cases, you can make your team work overtime, and instead of working eight hours a day, you can work 10 hours a day, six days a week to make up, Saturday school could be a option. These are things we could do to catch up, I think it’s doable and it’s not really an unreasonable situation considering that in 2020 a lot of people, a lot of staff had a lot of free time they got paid and stayed at home and then on the other hand of course a lot of teachers had to work a lot of extra time to deal with the virtual aspects but I think we could do that, Saturday school is a great option.

Amber Frommherz, former head of the Head Start program at Tlingit & Haida, said we need to completely change the framework for the pandemic.

“I think in terms of bouncing back and recovering for students, that as adults and members of our community, we need to be aware of how we frame this, and that won’t always be a scenario. half empty. I think that’s just as important to how we’re going to recover and recover, but also, on top of that, reframe the fact that our students have been successful, our staff have done and our school board has paved the way with the superintendent, “said Frommherz.” So I think it’s important to keep in mind the type of resilience framework, the resilience assertion that they have proven and the capacity of our community to come together to help us through this time. “