Andover is Broken

Hi. Thanks for the detailed response! It was helpful. However, I would appreciate if you didn’t patronize me if you choose to respond again. Please “check yourself” (so to speak) and consider how you speak to teenage girls.

While I agree that the teenage mental health crisis is very real and must be addressed, I also believe that statistics from and about Andover are best to use when speaking about Andover’s pandemic response. What we know from Andover is that student GPAs have actually been HIGHER in fall term compared to past terms. From anecdotal evidence (my personal experience and from the experiences of my peers) teachers at Andover have been incredibly vigilant about making sure students are present in their classes. During this year moreso than any years in the past, faculty members at PA have been very proactive in reaching out to both students and their parents when any attendance problems or other issues arise.

Also, it is every teacher’s right as a HUMAN BEING to decide whether or not they want to teach in person. No amount of tuition paid entitles students to ask their teachers to risk their health and safety. If a teacher doesn’t feel comfortable, for whatever reason, they have a right to teach from home. If a student doesn’t want to respect that, they can take a leave of absence, go to their local public school, and come back to PA next fall. This has nothing to do with “myths built on fear.” It has to do with respecting other people on a baseline level.

As an Andover student, I am grateful for what Andover teachers have done to facilitate a “semi-normal” school year. While their work is certainly imperfect (especially regarding anti-racism and mental health, two issues I consider much more important than tuition), I appreciate their efforts and empathize with the fact they have to make incredibly difficult decisions.

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I’m pretty sure students at Loomis, Exeter, Lawrenceville and lots of other places went home for Thanksgiving and have yet to go back. Andover seniors can return to campus this weekend.

I’m also not sure about a broad claim about how “healthy” the fall was on campus. The quarantining and the pods, the masks and the distancing, being stuck on campus when family could not visit, were not necessarily great for mental health.

In the fall, Andover relied so much on being outside in order to have social distancing. I think it is about 10 degrees outside right now. I’m not sure how things could have worked with everyone on campus the whole winter.

I’m also not surprised that students seem to be more sympathetic to teachers. They actually live together, know how much both groups care for each other, and know how hard it is for both groups to not have things like normal.

Maybe people who are not hearing of “complaints” of teachers of other schools are not listening.

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Nobody patronized you. The messages can be conveyed without the tone to other posters.

Nobody is diminishing your anecdotal experience. But it is just that…anecdotal. As stated often on CC, the plural of anecdote is not data. Not data for Andover and not data beyond Andover.

Teachers do have the right to refuse to teach in person. It’s not a human right (by definition), but it is a right under the constitution. Nobody is contending that. I personally am suggesting that they be fired if they refuse to teach in person, without demonstration that they are not in a vulnerable population.

You’re not acknowledging the facts presented. They are NOT risking their health and safety. That is the old argument that we all supported at the onset of COVID, because we knew no different. The data and the facts are now better understood and as I have posted.

You love your teachers. That is wonderful and I’m sincerely glad that it is working for you. It is NOT working well for many students. We will all be better off (students, teachers, parents, administrators, coaches, etc.) if we get back to full-time in-person teaching. No group loses in doing so.

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Might I remind members of the forum rules: “Our forum is expected to be a friendly and welcoming place.”
https://www.collegeconfidential.com/policies/rules

Let’s support each other instead of throwing shade.

Additionally, College Confidential is not a debating society. Make your point and moved on.

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@CMKDad please private message me. I am a current Andover student and I would be happy to discuss your reasoning. I am not out to disprove you but I want to get to know more about this situation. Likewise, I am communicating with the Andover administration and I was hoping to set up a Zoom meeting where both parties would be completely anonymous save the chat. Please @CMKDad reach out to me.

Curious, what happened to Tuition? they charge more than what they said? And regarding communications, do advisers really easily accessible? By the way, this is a really strange question but do you or your friends have to walk past that graveyard when you go from dorm to classroom? Some dorm seems to be very far away from classroom and have to walk past the graveyard and the woods. Many thanks!

A major issue is that PA SEEMS to have lost sight of the primary goal of any school: the well-being of the students. I say “seems” because we truly believe that this is not the intention. Yet, it is the reality of the current situation.

Come this March, our upper boarder will have spent a full-year (minus five weeks) learning through a computer alone in our house. Because they attend boarding school, they do not have a significant social group in place at home and do not participate in sports at home. Any friends they do have at home are attending in-person classes at our local public and private schools or have returned to their boarding schools.

The social isolation issues are real. This is not healthy for anyone but especially for high school students. We are hearing that Andover students are suffering from depression, low motivation, loneliness and an overall feeling of despair. While this suffering may be universal because of the pandemic, we know of no other high school students (other than Andover students) who have spent almost a full year (not voluntarily) learning remotely.

The reason so many Andover parents and students are frustrated is because students and by extension their families have not been involved in any of the discussions about how to best meet the needs of ALL constituencies this academic year. After the disaster of last spring, administrators spent a lot of time during the late summer trying to convince the parent-body that they had a viable plan in place. Lowers and Uppers were offered the opportunity spend five weeks on campus during the fall. Even though classes were still remote and students attended via zoom from their dorm rooms, students who went back were content to be with their friends and abided faithfully with the safety precautions in place. (Seniors have been back on campus for most of the year so they may not feel the same pain as their classmates.)

Without warning, toward the end of the fall term, PA announced a changed plan for winter term. All students except for seniors would remain at home for the entire term. Seniors could opt to spend five weeks on campus. Again, this change was made without any parent input. The first opportunity for parents to openly express their concerns about the way Andover has handled this situation came just this week in the form of a parent zoom focus group organized by the parent association. Sadly, that meeting apparently began with the reading of an administration statement that there would be no changes to the plans. One wonders why PA even bothered to consult parents if they did not plan to change course. Peer schools have held town halls and parents meetings throughout this academic year (involving the heads of school) and included families in the planning process.

Additionally, PA’s policies are not in accordance with the SCIENCE. Indeed, the CDC has spoken on this subject and said that students belong in school. Schools across the USA, including every one of Andover’s peer schools, have brought students to campus this winter. Our student shares that friends at peer schools report that their schools have erected outdoor dining pavilions, have added to their faculty with younger faculty to teach in person classes and have offered housing to day students so that they in effect create “a bubble” around the campus. Andover has the resources to create a safe environment on campus, even during the winter. It should have done so and and its failure to do so is disappointing.

Looking ahead, Andover should prepare itself to bring ALL students back for the ENTIRE spring term. They should offer as many in person classes as they can and allow in-person extracurriculars including sports and clubs (following medical and scientific safety guidelines.) Failure to do so will show a complete abdication of the duty they owe to the students.

Andover is a great school. The quality of the education is exemplary. The people (students, faculty and staff) are special. We are hopeful that PA will course-correct now and salvage the rest of this academic year.

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I am an Andover student and can support the claim that remote learning is not working. Our teachers are very flexible and kind with our situation, but I have not been learning hardly anything. We have two classes a week for each individual class. In the fall term, we had a total of an hour and a half of each class every week. Now, we were only given an increase of 20 minutes a week. As someone who stayed home, the influx in grades has been teachers being more lenient not because of more students learning. The whole situation has not been the best.

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One rationale Cate used for keeping students remote after winter break was that the local hospitals were overwhelmed. While they were confident the Cate community would be able to control covid on campus, the concern was if students needed to go to the ER for something else, the school had no confidence they would get the appropriate medical attention. They just didn’t feel right putting the kids in a situation that they knew they couldn’t expect quality care if a child needed it.

That resonated with me, but never crossed my mind. There are probably a half dozen other reasons for the decisions each of these schools are making. I do believe, though, that the administrations are trying to make the best decisions for their students they can. They are in an impossible situation, without a safety net or instruction manual.

The communications from the administration need to be so so transparent and timely with these huge issues. Sounds like Andover has struggles with that.

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I don’t want anyone to die. But the dramatic “you are trying to kill faculty” rings hollow if same people go to the grocery store, go to the doctor’s office, order from amazon, purchase meat from a meatpacking facility, use the mail service or basically participate in society at any level, as so many are putting themselves at risk SANS (that means without) the amazing protections a school like PA can extend to it’s community.

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Well said @bslove . It also flies in the face of the current science as put forth in the latest CDC recommendations.

I would also note that the specific recommendations from the CDC as to what measures need to be taken are things that PA already has in place or can easily do.

I think the true misstep here ultimately is that PA’s board gave the faculty the choice for the entire academic year rather than on a term by term basis. If the decision could’ve been revisited for Spring, and if the board were guided by the current science, then they wouldn’t give the faculty that choice for the Spring save for demonstrably at-risk people (over 75, over 65 with 1 comorbidity, or any age with 2 comorbidities; not coincidentally the people now prioritized for the vaccines).

Regardless, teachers collectively need to be back in classrooms with students. Full stop.

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Maybe the contract was done by the old HoS? Is there anything the new HoS could have done to make it better for both the students and the teachers?

Has Andover done enough to make classroom safer to convince the teachers to come back?

Who is at fault here, school, teachers, or both?

@G07b10 when the current annual contract was done, the school was essentially between HoS. The prior HoS left the year prior. At the time the board agreed to the contract giving faculty the choice for the full academic year, Jim Ventre (Assistant Head of School for Admission and Financial Aid) was Interim HoS.

If you read the CDC guidelines, what they recommend has already been done by PA, or could easily be done. The issue is teachers saying that they still won’t come back.

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Well maybe the New HoS will be able to right the ship. I’d like to assume good intentions. Maybe when this all resolves there will be a good lesson to the kids about being flexible and nimble and that mistakes are ok as long as we can learn from them. The entire world literally choked when this virus emerged. So many fine minds, yet a complete inability to get organized and find creative solutions to challenges. We can put people in outer space and carry around little computers in our pockets but our society was unable to figure out ways to care for the kids. Sorry I digress - I will remain hopeful that compassion, common sense, data and logic will win.

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This is a historically bad time for schools, teachers, parents and kids - and all these groups are faced with untenable choices. Can we just acknowledge that these circumstances suck - for students, parents, teachers, administators alike and we’re all just muddling through the best we can?

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A lot of people expected tuition to be lowered considering the full boarding experience wasn’t met these past few terms.

As for the graveyard, yeah lol sometimes you walk through if you need to rush to class but you can always take the path instead.

Re: tuition. Completely separate from the value of the education being delivered (or not) is the fact that this winter we are paying for food and athletics (remember that these are included as part of tuition) yet are receiving neither. And on top of that we are also now paying for outside athletic activities.

First world problems for sure, but there you go.

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I think this is the point that hits hardest in my house. Kiddo is at one of the very few other BSs that did not bring students back on campus this winter (yes, there are a few other than Andover). I cannot comprehend how the majority of BSs are back in session right now, and yet kiddo’s school is not. Additionally, her school has the advantage of regular and frequent on site covid testing and a gps tracking system for all school community members, so close contacts can be immediately identified, making it even easier and safer to have students on campus.

The open schools took this opportunity to find innovative was to keep their school community healthy and happy (outdoor skating rinks, outdoor eating pavilions, fire pits etc), and the remote schools essentially threw their hands up in the air and said “we give up”. I want my child to learn that we don’t give up when things get hard, we find a way to work around the issue while still keeping the entire community in mind.

The good news is that kiddo’s school will be back on campus in the Spring. But I fear if the school doesn’t change the focus from covid prevention to all around well being, students (mine especially) will not thrive.

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THIS. +1,000,000

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My sister just sent me this article and it seems quite relevant to this discussion.

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