Working together: Community support helped Ephrata School District pandemic response

EPHRATA — Ephrata School District Superintendent Tim Payne said he was very proud of the way the district responded to the challenge of the COVID-19 outbreak, and the credit belonged to district administrators, staff and Ephrata residents.

Payne was nearing the end of his first year as superintendent when the order to close schools was issued by state officials in late March 2020. The order also came as the district was finishing the first year of an extensive remodeling project.

How the district was going to respond to the challenge depended a lot on how the community was going to respond, Payne said. And as a new superintendent, he had to rely on traditions that already existed, and trust they encouraged people to work together.

“You hope that you have a culture of community, because you’re going to need your community,” he said. “I’m really fortunate. I don’t get any credit because I come into a community where all that exists. Ephrata is so great.”

‘Kids come before learning’

Like all districts statewide, Ephrata was required to switch to distance learning in about a week. Payne said the district had the right people in place.

“Fortunately in Ephrata – again – the administrative team they had, and have, assembled here is really good. Like, really good,” he said. “A large asset when you need to come together quickly.”

Ephrata didn’t have enough computers to provide one for every kid, so district officials had to find enough to go around. Schools still had to provide instruction – somehow – at a time when the directives coming from state education officials and state and local health officials were changing, sometimes every day.

Ephrata started preparing for 2020-21, and state officials left it up to individual districts to determine how to proceed. Payne said there was one thing administrators and teachers tried to keep in mind.

“We exist for kids and learning, and kids come before learning,” he said.

Kids have to have certain needs met before they can learn, he said. Some kids needed to be in school, and the adults running school had to adjust to take that into account.

‘Totally a team effort’

“Another thing we’re super-proud of is, we kept every employee working,” he said.

Everybody kept their job, even though it meant the district had to spend some of its own money, a move supported by the Ephrata School Board.

“That’s what I mean, the leadership, from the board on down to the community,” Payne said.

“We did a great job. Were we perfect? No. But we did a great job. And it was totally a team effort.”

The district provided training for teachers working in new conditions, and administrators worked extra. All of that cost money, and the school board was willing to do that, he said.

“Our teachers union was fantastic. They still are,” Payne said. “Our classified association, fantastic.”

The district’s unions were willing to modify the existing agreements to meet changing conditions. Union leadership was involved in the decision-making process from the beginning, he said. There were some innovations Ephrata administrators plan to keep.

“We did a different kickoff to the school year,” he said.

Kids had to pick up their computers and understand the expectations. Teachers and aides had to figure out how they would conduct class in an unprecedented situation.

“We kicked off school with an orientation, and that had a checklist of things we were going to (review). And we’re actually going to keep that,” Payne said.

‘Getting out of the way’

The pandemic arrived in the middle of a major remodel at Columbia Ridge Elementary School and Ephrata Middle School, and in the planning stages of design at Grant Elementary School and the Performing Arts Center at Ephrata High School.

“We have $73 million-worth of projects going in the midst of a pandemic, and designing and building and bidding projects in the middle of a pandemic,” he said.

But Payne said the building project was less challenging because he had experience with school construction.

Payne is new to Ephrata, but he’s not new at being a superintendent.

“I’m finishing up my 23rd year of being a superintendent,” he said.

He was superintendent in College Place for 18 years, where the district remodeled all of its schools and added a new high school. Payne said his experience in school construction probably was one thing that made him of interest to the Ephrata School Board.

The building projects kept going through the pandemic, and schools kept functioning, which Payne said was a tribute to the building administrators, teachers and staff.

“There’s a whole lot of me getting out of the way and letting great people do great things,” he said. “It takes the whole team.”

It’s a different challenge, Payne said, but that comes with the territory.

“They’re always different. Nothing’s ever the same,” he said. “That’s the nature of education, right? Even when you’re a classroom teacher, the next year you get a new set of kids, so it’s always different. So if you want a career that’s always different, education is it, because no two years, no two weeks, are ever the same.”

‘It was the right time’

Payne said he wasn’t sure, when he was a kid, what he wanted to do.

“I tried to do something else in high school, but I couldn’t pass the test,” he said.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t do the work, he said; he just had trouble with the test. But that turned out to be a good thing.

“There was probably some divine intervention going on there,” he said.

Then one of his former teachers needed help with her computer. She asked Payne for help, and while he was showing her the computer she told him she thought he’d make a good teacher.

“It was the right time,” he said. “That’s the power teachers don’t know teachers have over kids.”

Even though he was a former student, her words still had an impact.

“Sometimes you say the smallest thing, and it means the world to somebody.”

He was considering a career as a wildland firefighter, but his wife Sheliah wasn’t very enthusiastic. She thought he should continue with his education degree.

“Look at now. It’s a great decision my wife made,” he said.

Payne started as a middle school teacher and went straight from the classroom to being superintendent of the Keller School District, a kindergarten through eighth grade district.

“The learning curve was so steep I almost fell off,” he said.

He was almost ready to give it up and go back to the classroom, he said. But he got support and help from other superintendents and administrators, notably Larry MacGuffie, formerly the superintendent in Ephrata.

That knowledge of Ephrata meant it was the only district he looked at when he decided to look for a new job, and in Payne’s opinion it was a good choice.

“I’m super-blessed to be an Ephrata Tiger. I just love being here,” he said.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.