Leaders at some Kentucky elementary schools making the strongest progress in creating student proficiency prior to the pandemic see a new landscape ahead as vaccines offer promise for a return to normalcy.

Understanding homework can be hard enough. After participating in the Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership, however, energized parents in Paducah are pursuing a bigger plan for bolstering school success — expanding opportunities for adults to explore family dynamics, discuss child development, grasp education issues and more.

APRIL 2020 \ SCHOOL SUPPORT STAFF For more than 100 high school students in Graves County, thinking about the effects of coronavirus arrived months before prevention measures transformed students’ lives and left school staffs and communities scrambling to meet the needs of suddenly isolated students and families. Kentucky’s aggressive response to limiting the virus’s spread upended student and family life. In addition to new modes of teaching and learning, the crisis has also jolted adults who support schools into new directions and prompted community responses to supplement student learning and promote families’ welfare.

FEBRUARY 2020 \ MONROE COUNTY A clear handle on fractions is the goal for fourth-grade math students one January morning at Gamaliel Elementary, a small school perched near the Tennessee border in Monroe County. Teacher Shelly Buck asks her students to concentrate and visualize: “Make up one-fourth in your head,” she says. “If you were to visually picture one-fourth, is it more or less than one half?” She asks students to think and be prepared to take a position or to agree or disagree with classmates ...