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For two years, teachers and school staff have managed rapidly changing COVID protocols. In a series airing all week, independent producer Erica Heilman talks with teachers, administrators and staff in the Northeast Kingdom. In this story, Erica speaks with Elaine Collins, principal at Newport City Elementary School, about the pervasive stress of teaching kids through a pandemic, and the changing role that schools are playing in children's lives.

For two years, teachers and school staff have managed rapidly changing COVID protocols. In a series airing all week, independent producer Erica Heilman talks with teachers, administrators and staff in the Northeast Kingdom. In this story, Erica speaks with fifth-grade teacher Patty Ovitt from Newport City Elementary School.

For two years, teachers and school staff have managed rapidly changing COVID protocols. In a series airing all week, independent producer Erica Heilman talks with teachers, administrators and staff in the Northeast Kingdom. In this story, Erica talks with staff and faculty at Newport City Elementary School about behavioral changes they’re noticing in kids since the onset of the pandemic.

For two years, teachers and school staff have managed rapidly changing COVID protocols. In a series airing all week, independent producer Erica Heilman talks with teachers, administrators and staff in the Northeast Kingdom. In this story, Erica talks with Judy Castonguay. She was the guidance counselor at Brighton Elementary in Island Pond for 24 years.

In a series airing all week, independent producer Erica Heilman talks with teachers, administrators and staff in the Northeast Kingdom about their struggles after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, Erica talks with teachers and staff at Newport City Elementary School about gaps they’re noticing in development and learning among their students.

All over the country, schools are struggling with the omicron surge, and struggling to keep up with rapidly changing COVID protocols. It has been a chaotic time. Last week, independent producer Erica Heilman spent a day at Brighton Elementary, a pre-K through eighth grade school of 107 students up in Island Pond. It was a particularly challenging day.

Until this summer, COVID numbers in the Northeast Kingdom remained low. Since the summer and the onset of the delta variant, those numbers have risen, and in the weeks after Halloween, there's been a surge of COVID patients at small regional hospitals.

COVID numbers have been on the rise for months in St. Johnsbury. As they work in the local hospital, two night nurses mourn losses in their communities both here and abroad.

Respiratory therapists, like many other health care workers, are in very short supply. The job of an RT is to make sure that patients with respiratory problems are getting enough oxygen. And during this COVID surge, they are having to marshal these resources very carefully and imperfectly.

COVID numbers in the Northeast Kingdom have been climbing, and according to staff at the Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital in St. Johnsbury, the weeks after Halloween have been the most trying since the beginning of the pandemic.