Math workbooks at a Eugene, Oregon school arrived months into the semester, delayed by paper shortages. 

Some 15 classes at one suburban New York high school were canceled last semester for lack of substitutes. 

In a Maryland high school outside D.C., new pencils were nowhere to be found when classes started in the fall, the victim of supply chain lags and no staff to order them.

Nacho cheese, reliably cheap and available, has become a mainstay on one Indianapolis school’s lunch menu as spiraling costs and ingredient shortages have led to meals on repeat.    

This is the new normal in schools across the country: Classes are back in person but day-to-day operations are a far cry from pre-pandemic norms, the lingering effects of the COVID crisis challenging everything from staffing and student mental health to school lunches. 

Compiling dozens of examples from survey responses and original reporting, ����Ӱ�� found schools are trying to function and adapt. 

For administrators like Greg Zenion, principal at Chariho Middle School in Rhode Island, this year marks the first time he cannot fill core jobs: teacher assistants, special education teachers and social workers.

“I’m in a pretty rural, beautiful area. I’m surrounded by soft fields. My building was built in 1989. It’s a great place to work. It’s a beautiful building,” Zenion said. “I can’t get people to apply for the jobs. So I think a new normal is how do you run a building short-staffed and how do you get creative to fill your positions?”

Yet educators say necessity can indeed be the mother of invention. 

“Despite all of this adversity being talked about, our school people still got their chin straps buckled up. They’re still ready to go to work, and they’re still over there doing everything they can do for kids,” said Ronn Nozoe, CEO of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. “This year is different because folks have found all kinds of creative ways to provide.” 

Some examples: 

To ease the burden of juggling a family with teaching full-time, an Indianapolis school opened free child care for staff on-site. At one Milwaukee school, $20 gift cards are given to teachers who substitute. 

Schools, public and private are all hands on deck — recruiting drivers and other staff at grocery stores, offering bonus pay. 

But no amount of personal dedication can alleviate systemic strains. Even armored with the optimism inherent to many school leaders, they are coming to terms with a new reality and what’s at stake. 

“Our members remain dedicated to kids and excited about [school],” Nozoe said, “but they are, especially the ones who have been around a bit and can see the writing on the wall, worried about the shortages and what that may mean if we can’t augment the workforce quickly enough…”

As one teacher at a school in Delaware serving a high proportion of students in poverty explained, “the students are so burnt out and so are we.” 

To make up for learning loss, teachers at the Delaware school introduce new material on days when students also take mandatory tests. Their veteran teachers are retiring more often, leaving big gaps. One teacher now has regular panic attacks. “If it wasn’t for my incredible coworkers and admin I wouldn’t be able to do it,” the educator wrote. 

Several educators painted a picture of students changed by core social years spent in isolation in front of screens: less curiosity or interest; individual work preferred to working with peers; missed class and deadlines. Students arrive, and leave, exhausted, but are expected to catch up more than ever before. 

The concerning behavior has made school staff put students’ emotional well being first, with more of an emphasis on offering school-based mental health services. 

“The need was…far more significant than any of us realized,” said Monica Asher, a Columbus, Ohio high school principal. “Definitely a new normal is… more of an acceptance…to employ social workers, mental health professionals. Pre-pandemic, those were nice if you could get them but…now …those are necessary.”

Pieced together, the anecdotes offer a clearer image of the American school day as the pandemic continues to have a hold on students, families and educators: 

Morning: For Many, a Transportation “Dumpster Fire”

By 5 a.m., a high schooler in a small city between Orlando and Tampa, Florida is up — sleep deprived but with a sense of urgency: He has to reach the Wesley Chapel bus hub by 5:59 a.m, to get to class by 7:06 a.m. His school now starts earlier to make up for hurricane days and remote learning. 

“Our bus situation is pretty much a dumpster fire,” his mother responded in the survey, “…this is unhealthy for those kids. And half the time the bus isn’t at the hub on time, meaning we parents have to drive the half hour one-way trip to the school… ”

At a community school in northern Georgia, “some teachers at my school delay instruction in order to wait for the late buses. This means that some of the students who are not late to school are sitting idly. It is a huge waste of instructional time,” said a school director.  

In Omaha, Nebraska, the city’s major urban district serving over 50,000 students has begun cutting routes, increasing the living radius to qualify. 

The underlying culprit, many believe, is simple economics. 

“I hear from principals all over the country that it’s really hard because of the school bus driver pay,” Nozoe said. “These folks who drive commercially can get more money [in] other venues than driving a school bus. (And) it takes a certain kind of person to drive a school bus. You just can’t turn around and scream at the kids at the top of your lungs.”

First Bell: The Writing on the Wall

At a Milwaukee Catholic high school, social studies teacher Mary Talsky has noticed lots of empty seats. For every email about a kid out sick, she gets three to four times more about absences because of mental health issues: My kid is struggling with anxiety and can’t come in today; I’m taking my child to an appointment with a psychiatrist. 

“I have not seen numbers like this before,” Talsky said. “Maybe they’re just more willing to say that out loud than they were in the past.”  

Across the country, teachers start the day by opening up adjoining classroom walls — asked to cover for colleagues.  

Lunchtime: Same Cafeteria, Fewer Options

Brooklyn high school senior Samantha Farrow told ����Ӱ�� students don’t come to school with COVID as often as they did this time last year. There’s more understanding from teachers if you miss school for being sick, more flexibility around work turned in late. 

And she’s noticed another change. 

“I think a lot of people don’t really sit in the cafeteria anymore, because it feels like a superspreader event,” she said. “So a lot of people eat in the hallways or go outside to eat.”

Further west, at Adelante, a K-8 school in Indianapolis, students in the lunch line see now familiar sights: yellow and plastic. Nachos and frozen items make the cut often: as is the case in , food distributors have increased the dollar price per meal. Others districts have trouble finding ingredients.

“Our food services are still…reeling from the overall cost (and) day to day shortages of what can be offered fresh and what can’t — which can result in kids having to repeat meal patterns day in and day out…” said Jordan Habayeb, managing director at Adelante. 

“We have to dip into [federal] funding,” to offset the increases in food costs, “which then means we have to kind of take the gas off of something else,” Habayeb said. On the chopping block is funding to expand after school clubs. Fifteen are offered, half as many as schools nearby. 

Afterschool: Trade Offs

Come day’s end in Snellville, Georgia, some students pass on tutoring or afterschool clubs: There is no late bus.

In New Orleans, the principal of a Spanish immersion school reviews applications for new English teachers, the need for more instructors after students spent nearly a year learning remotely and only hearing Spanish spoken at home. 

A high school administrator in Antioch, Illinois starts making calls: Their school furniture supplier has had trouble filling orders.

At the Indianapolis school with plenty of nachos and cheese, about 40 students and staff’s own kids file into a new free after care program that offers in-depth math tutoring. Fifteen families are on the waitlist. 

And in southern Florida, Haines City High School families head to dinner, part of a new “Parent University” hosted monthly on-campus. They talk about the new normal around technology, learn how to check their childrens’ grades and progress toward graduation requirements. 

“I think it is really important to remember that yeah, [the pandemic] was pretty bad,” said New Orleans middle school principal Laura Adelman-Cannon, who had to rebuild post-Katrina. “But there have been other really bad things. And we made it through, right? It’s possible.”

Besides running the school of 550 students, Adelman-Cannon is also serving as the sixth-grade English teacher — missing out on hours of sleep and time with her family after a long day at the International School of Louisiana, Uptown Campus.

She’s doing double duty because finding new, qualified teachers for her middle school has been a “nightmare,” she said.

“By no means do I want to valorize it … I’m doing it because it’s in the best interest of my kids,” she said, “but boy, I really wish I had an amazing sixth-grade English … teacher so I could just be a principal.”

As educators leave the profession from what Adelman-Cannon suspects is burnout and pressure on teachers accelerated by the pandemic, she has struggled to find a qualified English teacher with experience.

“I think teachers are exhausted. They are also traumatized, to some extent, from the pandemic,” she said, adding she needed a sixth-grade English teacher who was certified and experienced. 

“I just couldn’t find (one),” Adelman-Cannon said. “You could always find ELA teachers. But not anymore.”

Across the country, educators say the new normal in schools is taking a toll: Canceled classes because of teacher shortages. Students are late to school because of bus driver shortages. Cafeterias serving meals on repeat because of inflation and supply shortages. Students and staff are depressed. 

There’s no doubt Adelman-Cannon loves her students and the class time she’s getting with them. But doing two jobs is far from ideal. As a teacher, she wishes she had a planning period. She wishes she could be pulling students aside after class for remediation.

But she can’t. She’s the principal.

Being in the classroom has also allowed her to witness some alarming behavior: Her students fall asleep in class, even during usually-engaging group activities. She’s also seen them talking to themselves. 

“I have kids sleeping in my class, like so much more than I’ve ever had,” she said. “They’ll be right inside a fishbowl discussion, right with me in a discussion, with their heads down, asleep.

“I’m not a mental health professional. I think there’s some depression,” she said. “Putting your head down sleeping, not caring, no, like, no perseverance, to the point of not doing any [work], just not doing it. Those are the behaviors of concern.”

She believes these are behaviors students picked up while learning remotely that will take time to unlearn. Many seem to have forgotten they’re back in a classroom, surrounded by peers and educators. 

“I see them, like talk to themselves and I’m like, ‘we can hear you. You’re not by yourself. You’re not saying that in your head.’ There’s a lot of resocialization going on.”

Beyond sleeping in class, Adelman-Cannon’s students aren’t turning in their assignments at alarming rates. She’s concerned she’ll have to fail many more than she ever has.

“I can reteach skills, I can scaffold skills, I can change the book, but I can’t change that desire if there’s no motivation,” she said.

She feels as though she’s out of tricks and tools for engaging students. No incentives — not even parties in the principal’s office — seem to be working.

But Adelman-Cannon, who has been a principal for 25 years, is certain the school will adjust and recover from the pandemic. Much of this optimism comes from teaching through another crisis: Hurricane Katrina. 

“I knew I could get through the pandemic and I could get through this time because I’ve been through Katrina,” she said. “I have lost everything. I have rebuilt my educational teaching world … rebuilt a school post Katrina … I know it is hard, but I know I can do it now because I did it before.”

She believes the school is once again weathering the storm. The staff who are there, she said, are committed and bullish.

“They are seeing successes, it does feel more normal, and they are now able to see some of the rewards,” she said.

One of their biggest successes this year, Adelman-Cannon believes, is the school’s commitment to students’ mental health. 

“We can’t learn anything if we are not healthy and our children are really in need of therapy — like all of them,” Adelman-Cannon said. “I wish I could give every child a therapist.”

She did the next best thing by hiring a social worker and a licensed counselor. She hopes this will help her kids pull through. 

“I have 100% faith in my teachers and our parents and our kids. We’re gonna come out the other end, better, stronger, more flexible thinkers,” she said. “With the greater ability to handle all the challenges that life throws at us and we’re gonna get there together.”

Lane’s strategy: Tapping into his alumni network and recruiting students to become teachers and other staff while they’re still enrolled at Haines City High School in Central Florida.

An idea he came up with four years ago as teaching vacancies became difficult to fill, Lane has avoided staffing shortages — part of a new normal unfolding across the country as schools face bus delays, canceled classes, repeat meals, and student mental health.

“The mentality of most principals is to graduate them, prepare them for the real world and send them off,” Lane told ����Ӱ��. “I started thinking, why am I sending them off when I’ve got all these vacancies? Let me start inviting them back and work with them so they can make a great career right here with me.”

Today, 35 of the school’s 147 teachers are Haines City High School alumni, with graduates dating back to June 2018.

In addition, eight alums are part-time substitutes, three are classroom aides and three are secretaries.

“The [alumni] are super excited because they truly respected and liked their teachers,” Lane said. “Now they’re hand-in-hand, side-by-side working with the people they grew up respecting in their own classroom.”

To get students interested in returning to Haines as teachers and other staff, Lane works to create “unforgettable moments” while they are enrolled.  

“You’ve got to make sure your current students love the school,” Haines said. “You have to make sure there’s a focus on building relationships between the teachers and the students.”

For Lane, recruitment starts with on-the-job training by placing juniors and seniors in student aid positions working directly with teachers, custodians or secretaries.

As they graduate, Lane continues on-the-job training by encouraging them to take on substitute roles as they pursue their college degree.

“When they’re in college, I work with them to take their classes either on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and substitute for me Tuesday, Thursday or vice versa,” Lane said.

After college, Lane said they’re on the top of his list to hire for full-time positions.

“I have even tried to put our alumni either next to the same planning room as their favorite teacher or even in the same hallway where they have their favorite teacher from their high school days as their mentor,” Lane said. “It’s just an amazing process to see.”

Nia Getfield, who graduated from Haines City High School in 2018, went from being a part-time substitute to a provisional teacher this school year.

“It’s just that familiarity and that security they were offering when I first came out of college that really brought me back,” Getfield told ����Ӱ��.

Getfield said Lane became principal when she was a sophomore, improving students’ perception of coming to school.

“As a student, I was always able to say that Mr. Lane’s cool, he knows what he’s doing and I can trust him,” Getfield said. “As his employee now, I can still say the same thing.”

Adrianna Ramos, who graduated from Haines City High School in 2014 and is now a classroom aide this school year, agreed. 

“Getting to work with teachers that inspired me back in the day feels so good,” Ramos said. “And I tell them, yeah I’m back because you guys made an impact on me.”

Sonia Gutierrez, who graduated from Haines City High School in 2005, has been a front office secretary for over 6 years. 

This school year, Gutierrez was promoted as the school’s financial secretary and athletic business manager.

“We’re like a family here,” Gutierrez said. “Mr. Lane makes it fun here as an employee and it’s just been a great experience to be back.”

Lane said Gutierrez is one of three front office secretaries who are alumni.

“Do you know the sense of pride they deliver on the phone and when visitors walk through to say they were alumni and now work the front office to greet people? It’s amazing,” Lane said.

Because of its success, Lane said he will continue recruiting students to fill future vacancies.

“I always tell my students if you want to go off and do something else, I’ll prepare you for it,” said Lane. “But if you’re not sure, you got a spot right here with me.”