Traverse City Area Public Schools (TCAPS) Superintendent Dr. John VanWagoner thought the job was big when he started this summer; now he’s juggling budget shortfalls, COVID protocols, student health and safety, changing government rules, and a staffing situation so dire he’s on deck every morning himself to teach a class. The Ticker caught up with VanWagoner Thursday to hear what’s next for the district, its parents, and students.

Ticker: First of all, what’s the latest with the vaccine and when your teachers might get it?
VanWagoner: Well, the Pfizer vaccine is available here locally to some today, and the order is broken down into groups 1A, 1B, 1C, and 2. The good news is educators fall into group 1B, but it’s also true that roughly half the population does, too, including police, firefighters, essential workers. Still, speaking for myself, being in group 1B and 1C is quite a big difference. But they’re saying educators are probably looking at March or April.

Ticker: And will the vaccine be mandated for TCAPS teachers?
VanWagoner: No, you can’t. It’s not legal, because it was approved under an emergency order, so it can’t be mandated even for healthcare workers, is my understanding.

Ticker: What’s the latest with your staffing? It’s been the biggest issue causing disruption in your scheduling.
VanWagoner: No doubt. And it’s going to continue to be huge, because it was an issue even before the pandemic; we were struggling getting substitute teachers and bus drivers. And when you have a segment of the population especially immunocompromised or in an age group more susceptible, understandably they’re not going to sub. So we were already tight, and then we started losing the groups we were recruiting the most. 

Ticker: What can you do?
VanWagoner: First, we have to look and see if we’re advertising and getting the word out to hire those that are available. Fortunately all this has given some exposure that we need more people to help kids. Second, there’s actually some legislation that passed yesterday and is on the governor’s desk for signature that would allow people who were retired to come back and help and not have that count against their pension. So let’s say a person was earning $50,000 and retired. They could earn a maximum of around $17,000 from the school district, so they could work only maybe a third of the year. So we’re hopeful to get them on the critical shortage list and have them earn as much as they can.

Ticker: And it sounds like the governor will sign that…
VanWagoner: Yes, I think it was unanimously passed by the House and Senate. I’d be shocked if she didn’t sign it. And that won’t be the full answer, but it might get us a few more people. The biggest issue here is compensation; we get paid 65 cents to do a dollar’s work. What’s really killing us is is our legacy costs. For every dollar we pay an employee, we have to pay an additional 27 cents back to the state for retirement. So we’re hoping to raise some salaries, but we don’t know what the next budget year holds, either. We’re trying to put all those things together and try to solve the [staffing] issue. And quite frankly, we need people to celebrate and appreciate teachers. One thing I hope comes out of the pandemic is how important teachers and support staff are. If you don’t have them, it’s kind of hard to have kids educated. And many parents are learning when helping at home, “This teaching is harder than I thought!"

Ticker: You’re at the point where you must have the numbers for second semester in terms of students choosing in-person versus virtual.
VanWagoner: It’s pretty similar, actually. We have not seen a big shift. We’ve had some people who were Virtual On Demand who wanted to go live, some face-to-face who are going Virtual On Demand. But the staffing numbers are pretty close to the exact same as they were. The only difference is we had some parent input on art, music, and PE virtually that we were doing through a vendor. We’ve now identified the capacity to do that ourselves with TCAPS teachers. 

Ticker: What are you seeing with student performance? We keep hearing students are falling behind at the high school level.
VanWagoner: We have mentors that are our employees…the state required that we have contact with kids who are online, at least one contact a week, and some are having two or more contacts a week, to keep track of performance and attendance. I'll be interested at the end of the semester to see how those numbers look.

Ticker: So you haven’t seen any numbers on performance?
VanWagoner: No. Overall, the concern is that kids have been behind, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near the districts downstate that have not been face-to-face [in the classroom] at all. Some are seeing 30-50 percent of kids not even logging in or anything. Our attendance has been well into the 80-90 percent, with Up North Virtual a little lower.

Ticker: Curious what the one issue is that's keeping you up at night: the new board member, more potential changes from the governor, a student outbreak...
VanWagoner: [Pause]. It’s definitely the worry of staffing as a whole. People being healthy, being able to recruit people, do we have enough today. I get a text at 5am with the numbers and never know if we’re short that day.

Ticker: You find out that morning if you’ll have enough teachers for that day? What if you don’t?
VanWagoner: It happened earlier this week. We were down six subs at West Middle School on Tuesday. So I asked our assistant principals at West and Central High Schools, someone from the central office curriculum to come teach...I was there and was going to sub and was ready to clear my calendar. The other part is the quarantining. We’ve had a whole lot of people quarantined by the health department who never showed symptoms who were maybe around someone [infected] for fifteen minutes, so they had to quarantine 14 days. That’s the biggest issue we’ve had. 

Ticker: But I thought the quarantining was now 10 days...
VanWagoner: It is not. When the state government passed it into law, they used 14 versus the CDC’s recommendations. So the health department says 10 days, but state law says as an employee it has to be 14 days. We’re trying to get some relief from that, but it’s a serious issue, especially with bus drivers. If a teacher feels good, they can still teach a classroom from a screen; you still need someone in the room, but that person doesn't have to teach. But there’s no driving a bus from home.

Ticker: What’s been the biggest frustration that the general public just doesn't understand?
VanWagoner: I think the level of change that has been made to our environments. Every time a kid sits down and gets up and a new kid comes in, the whole environment has to be wiped down. At lunch time, every table cleaned. And we need people to do those things. Some parents have asked about lockers, and I understand it’s not really fair to have students carry boots, coats, and books to every class. But a lot of kids share lockers. It’s a high touch point. So how do you clean 1,200 lockers in West Middle School between every class? You can’t. So we’re trying to strategize that right now and figure it out. But our environments were not built that way. Still, we feel very strongly that our kids deserve at least some face-to-face learning. But the cleaning protocols…it’s a lot. We have a warehouse full of cleaning supplies, masks, sanitizers. It’s a lot of work.

Ticker: How are you feeling overall about instruction?
VanWagoner: The teachers have done a phenomenal job. We've had a lot of positive feedback on virtual learning this fall versus last spring, which is a credit to the teachers having more than a day’s notice to prepare! There are still improvements to be made. The teachers themselves have asked for professional development now and post-pandemic on technology, because there's going to be an expectation to use these digital tools for students. So we’re doing a professional development day on January 4 to help put more tools in teachers’ toolboxes.

Ticker: How’s internal morale?
VanWagoner: Tough. But morale everywhere is very, very tough right now. In March we’ll be at a year of this, and a lot of people are saying, "Don’t expect people to not be wearing masks until summer." So we just have to continue to tell people we appreciate them, how truly essential they really are. We need the community as a whole to let them know that. 

Ticker: Last time we talked you had taken only one day off since you got here. Will you take time over the holidays?
VanWagoner: I will. I did take a couple days over Thanksgiving, but not one day otherwise. So yes, I’m looking forward to the holiday break. We moved to Traverse City just five months ago, and we still have boxes to unpack and home improvement projects to do. But I need to reenergize the batteries. And it will be interesting when we come back, planning for the 2021-22 school year.

Ticker: Seems like after this year, everything will be relatively easy.
VanWagoner: I don’t want to assume anything. We now work in an educational marketplace where parents have more choice, and we have to offer choices parents will choose. I have to be ready for anything. Even tomorrow [Friday], looks like I might have to substitute [teach]. I cleared my schedule, and I’ll have my teaching certificate in-hand, ready, willing and able if needed!