Nearly three years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, its effect on Centre County students is still showing up in state testing trends and the classroom. In all five local districts, educators, administrators and board members are noticing the academic, social and mental scars left by the pandemic.

Healing those scars has become a top priority for education leaders, who are grappling with lower test scores and the best use of funding aimed at pandemic learning losses.

“We need to give the kids, we need to give our teachers and we need to give our parents grace and understand that the pandemic was three years in the making,” Penns Valley Assistant Superintendent Sherri Connell said. “Ultimately it’s not going to be fixed with a flip of a switch.”

Academic proficiency and growth

PA Future Ready Index data from the 2021-2022 school year was released in the fall, with state and Centre County schools showing scores below pre-pandemic levels. The PA Future Ready Index combines data from the Pennsylvania System of School Assessments, Keystone Exams, attendance and graduation rates.

Although many local educators warn of using standardized tests to determine learning progress, they’re still the backbone of state measurements. Connell said although state tests serve a purpose and provide valuable information to the district, there are many factors to students’ progress and success.

“The PSSA serves a purpose, and it does tell us how our kids are doing with regards to everybody else in the state,” Connell said. “The problem with the PSSA is we get a kid’s score but we don’t see the individual questions that they get right or wrong.”

Social Emotional Learning

Academic scores are not the only area of pandemic learning loss — educators across the county are increasingly putting a focus on students’ social and emotional learning as well.

“Now that we’re back in school and together, how you interact, how you talk to one another, and how you behave in school is certainly something that we didn’t anticipate being such a high need,” said Christine Merritt, assistant superintendent at the State College Area School District.

In recent years, educators have noticed a downward trend in students’ emotional and behavioral health in the classroom. Connell attributes part of the problem to social media and difficulties in online learning when school went remote. Although educators did a phenomenal job under the circumstances, Connell said, collaboration between students became much more difficult in an online environment.

“We know that kids are social workers,” Connell said. “We know that kids work best when they collaborate and they talk and they write and if they can’t sit still or they’re worrying or fidgeting around or they’re upset about something, you can’t get that learning into them.”

The social and emotional health of students has a direct impact on their ability to learn and retain information, according to Henry Brzycki, who is president of the State College counseling and development organization Brzycki Group, which focuses on education and youth mental health. Learning and behavior are directly intertwined, he said, with schools across the country recording an uptick in student misconduct, chronic absenteeism and behavioral issues since the COVID pandemic.

“If they don’t feel good about themselves, if they’re not aware of themselves, and they’re not aware of their own emotions about themselves or the subject that they’re studying, they get frustrated,” Brzycki said. “They actually get angry at times and they either withdraw because of those feelings of anxiety, or they lash out.”

Although effects can be seen across the board, some grade levels are especially struggling. Brzycki said grades 4, 8 and 10 are showing the most impact from the pandemic, at least when it comes to social and emotional well-being. At the start of the pandemic, those students would have been in second grade, sixth grade and eighth grade.

“When you look at the students at that age, where they are developmentally in terms of their sense of self, their self-awareness, their self-understanding, their self-esteem, those are major transition times in their lives,” Brzycki said.

Students at those ages were robbed of many formative experiences — socially and academically — when learning was hybrid or remote. SCASD board Vice President Gretchen Brandt said students not only missed out on key memories but also important educational skills.

“They didn’t acquire the organizational skills that they would have, had they been in normal school,” Brandt said. “Just in terms of like, how do you budget your time? How do you manage what homework is due when? How do you study?”

But social and emotional health doesn’t stop at the classroom door. Educators are noticing an alarming trend in the overall mental health of students. Alerts to Safe2Say, an anonymous tip line to report any criminal, dangerous or potentially harmful behavior including bullying, self-harm, violence, depression or substance abuse, have increased in the district since the onset of the pandemic, Brandt said.

“We do work sessions at the high school with high school students,” Brandt said. “They all talk about (mental health) constantly. I mean, the students are like, ‘We haven’t gotten over what has happened to us in the pandemic, we need teachers to be understanding about where we’re at emotionally, mentally.’ ”

What districts are doing to help

The social and emotional well-being of students isn’t a new concept to local educators, but the pandemic has pushed it to the forefront.

“We have a pretty robust K-8 curriculum called Second Step (which) is a social-emotional program and that was in place before COVID,” Connell said. “That talks a lot about peer-to-peer relationships, how to deal with anxiety, how to deal with pressures, how to deal with social situations.”

Now, with the help of federal or state funding, schools are putting in place extra personnel and programs to help with the increasing mental health needs of their student populations.

During Tuesday night’s State of the Union, President Joe Biden announced more than $300 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Education to address youth mental health in schools.

Districts are also using COVID Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds to address both academic and social-emotional learning loss. With 30% of each districts’ allocated funds under the American Rescue Plan required to be used to address social, emotional and mental health supports, many local districts have used funds to hire additional counselors or mental health professionals.

Bellefonte Area school board President Jon Guizar said the district has hired additional counselors to address student needs.

“Really what’s most important as we try to get out of that hole that was created is the actual growth of the student,” Guizar said. “We really want to see them grow and get back on track.”

Brzycki said districts need to take charge and use the available federal funds to help ingrain more mental health supports into daily curriculum. It’s not just a matter of helping students in the classroom, but supporting them to become happy, well-functioning adults once they graduate.

“I think it’s important for us to address the mental health and well-being needs of students because they’re the ones who are going to turn into adults with problems that they’ve carried forward with them from their childhood into adulthood,” Brzycki said. “So if we can prevent a lot of these things happening in K to 12 education, we’re going to be creating better human beings and a better society.”