In a word, yes.

“It really has had the largest effect in our youngest grades, those kids that missed kindergarten and those kids that missed in-person first grade,” School Superintendent Monty Guthrie said. “That’s not a year’s fix. It’s going to take a period of time to get those students up to what we consider on track and on grade. That one’s not going to go away anytime soon.”

COVID did not only affect Eufaula, but also the state and nation as well.

One of the main problems has been adjusting to behavioral norms, norms learned by interacting with their peers in the first grade and earlier.

That interaction was not possible when they were kept home due to COVID.

“(Socialization) is a huge process. During lockdown, they didn’t learn to get along, didn’t learn to play with others, “Let’s take for instance, a pre-K student that didn’t go to class the last nine weeks of the pre-K year and didn’t get any real in-person learning their Kindergarten year, then they come into the first grade and you’ve got to do all the socialization, teaching before they can even start to learn. It really has had some lingering effects,” Guthrie said. ‘But, we’re doing better.”

He said, “where ever you stood on COVID – there were a lot of unexpected deaths, a lot of hospital stays, extended stays which for the first time ever the family couldn’t go visit that family member in the hospital and so I just think the overall traumatic effects of what it did to families and that community. No funerals, I mean that as a society we were accustomed to when someone has a loss we gather around them and support them though that time. It didn’t happen in a lot of cases through COVID.

“I’m not blaming or finger-pointing – that was the only time we’ve ever lived through something like that. Hopefully, we are better- prepared if it should ever happen again.”