For Sartell High School students, the transition into a “post-pandemic” environment has been underway ever since last year. For current seniors, the 2021-2022 school year was the first to be completely in-person, although there were some restrictions that were gradually loosened. Most notably, on February 14, 2022, the school district lifted the mask mandate, making it an optional choice for students and teachers for the first time in nearly two years. As of now, a student wearing a mask at Sartell High School is a very rare sight. Since the beginning of the year, the school has reopened all five lunch lines, and the pandemic luxury of a free breakfast or lunch is no more. 

Back in 2019, as the COVID lockdown upended schools across the nation, many had to scramble to find alternatives to lessons and testing. Class lessons were limited, tests were extremely difficult to monitor, and any form of homework had to be digitized. Zoom, a video conferencing platform, became the most popular way to hold classes in schools. Data from Statista shows that Zoom experienced a 300% revenue increase in just the 2020 fiscal year.  

However, the distributor of Advanced Placement (AP) exams, College Board, perhaps had to surmount the greatest obstacle – finding a way to give nearly 5 million AP tests to over 2.5 million students. Since AP test scores were a critical part to college admissions, the usually strict testing conditions the College Board used were suddenly impossible to enforce in a digital world. As a result, most AP tests completely got rid of their multiple choice questions and only included a handful of free response questions. The rest of a class’s curriculum that was not taught pre-lockdown was basically removed from testing requirements. 

Nevertheless, the most confounding factor in all of the tests was the ability to use the internet to search for answers or information. The College Board decided to allow students to be able to openly use the internet to search for answers, but they discouraged it and modified the questions, so the answers were not directly available on the internet. 

For current seniors at Sartell High School, the 2020 AP exams were the first that they had ever taken. It was their first experience of an actual college course, reading a college textbook, and preparing for the biggest test of their academic careers so far. Despite having class from the comfort of their own bedrooms, most students seemed to prefer the classroom environment.

Greta Schmidt, a senior who took the AP Human Geography exam in 2020, said, “I think I got to study a lot more on my own [at home], but it probably would have helped to be in-class too, just to talk with the teacher better because it is kind of hard to communicate over Zoom.”

Nationally, the shortened curriculum and modified testing of the 2020 AP exams seemed to create some doubts in taking more AP exams the following year. According to College Board program participation data, enrollment in AP classes after the 2020 school year took a marginal decline of over 94,000 students, going from 2,642,630 to 2,548,228. The last time the College Board experienced any decline in AP enrollment was in 2003, but that was only a drop of a little less than 16,000 students- just a fifth of the enrollment downturn experienced post-pandemic.

“I think it [the pandemic] harmed their [student’s] work ethic,” said Karrie Fredrickson, a psychology teacher at Sartell High School. “I think that I’m seeing it especially in my students that are coming in. They want everything to be very spoon fed to them, and they don’t take initiative on anything anymore. They just wait for it, and it’s changed how they interact with their colleagues.”

Even though the national downswing in AP enrollment hints at a drop in student’s work ethic, enrollment in AP classes at Sartell High School did not experience any decline – it actually increased. Using data acquired from the Sartell High School Counseling Office, it shows that enrollment in AP classes increased by over 16% – going from 337 students to 392. One of the most popular AP classes in the school, AP Calculus AB & BC, increased from 26 AB and 20 BC students in 2020 to 25 AB students and 27 BC students in 2021. Other AP classes such as AP World History: Modern also had an uptick in enrollment numbers from 2020 to 2021, going from 82 to 86 students (although this number is usually depending on the class size of the grade level).

A “decline” in the work ethic of students is not the only concern being brought to light in a post-pandemic world. The mental health obstacles brought on by COVID are also being addressed – or so it seems. 

A 2021 study done by the National Institutes of Health found that nearly half of Americans that were surveyed had recently reported symptoms of an anxiety or depressive disorder. 10% of the respondents said that they felt that their mental health needs were not being adequately met. 

At Sartell schools, the mental health needs of students have been attempted to be addressed. Last year, the Sartell School District established the Educational Equity and Student Experience Committee (EESE), a community-driven group that was jointly led by students, staff, and community members at Sartell ISD 748 schools. Over the course of the 2021-2022 school year, the EESE identified a series of recommended action steps that were to be taken with ten categories that revolved around the student experience at Sartell schools. One of these categories was student support. 

The EESE’s action steps on student support included “increasing staff support for mental health and the awareness of community partnerships and school-linked resources” and to “de-stigmatize student support services.” One of the recommended action steps to destigmatize student support services was creating a minimum of three check-ins per year with students and their respective counselors.  

“I think there is more our school could do personally,” said Hannah Rivard, a junior at Sartell High School. “They say the counselors will meet with us, yet I am not sure they have. I think just seeing them [the counselors] around the school more might be helpful to a lot of students, knowing that they are a part of the school and not just a part of their office.”

Despite a deceptive lack of action taken by the school district, there are currently some efforts being made to address mental health in schools. In an email conversation with Dr. Jeff Ridlehoover, the Sartell ISD 748 District Superintendent, he detailed the district’s current and upcoming plans to take care of students’ well-being. One of the most recognizable mental health awareness efforts made by the Sartell High School was becoming affiliated with the Green Bandana Project, a nationwide, student-led mental health support group. As of last year, Sartell High School was not officially licensed to be a Green Bandana Project school, so it was known as the Green Heart Project. Regardless, the premise of this project remained the same; members of the project tied green bandanas to their backpacks as a way to show students that they were an outlet for mental health help.

Kellan Nichols, a SHS senior and member of the Green Heart Project, said, “We are a group that focuses on mental health and mental well-being for the student body. Technically, we are not a mental health resource, and it is heavily emphasized that we are not meant to be consolation or therapy for a student in need, but we are a resource to help them find the help they need.” 

Moreover, Sartell High School has welcomed in a new counselor, Kate Turner, who was hired due to the growing student population and to make sure that students could have a stronger relationship with their respective counselors. 

In general, student mental health resources at the Sartell District seem promising as well. Sparing no expense, the school has received multiple financial grants to bring multiple mental health resources to the student body. One of these resources is the Youth Frontiers, a Minnesota-based group that aims to provide students with character training and enhance emotional learning. Sartell students will be able to attend Youth Frontier’s day-long retreats, starting next month: the Courage Retreat will be held in November for 7th graders, and the Respect Retreat will be held in February for 9th graders. Additionally, through an affiliation and grant with the Central Minnesota Mental Health Center, Sartell has added a school-linked mental health therapist that students can contact when in need. Other district plans for addressing student mental health include teacher training, social media awareness, and providing gradual and smoother transitions for students moving to a new building. 

Although the COVID pandemic has largely become an afterthought, its consequences have shed new light on academics and the importance of how schools handle the well-being of their students. Longitudinal studies that unveil the true damage to the emotional health of students will not be able to be conducted until many years from now, but as for the present day, the future of addressing and prioritizing student academic performance and mental health seems bright.