But in her new book Endemic: A Post-Pandemic Playbook, she is combining decades of experience in infectious diseases and HIV particularly, with her unique position on the sharp edge of pandemic policies to present a 10-point plan to prepare for future pandemics.

She discussed the book and her thoughts on what went right or wrong during COVID-19. Her answers have been edited for brevity and clarity:

Q: What does the title of your book, Endemic, mean, and why did you want to write this book now?

A: In the concept of infectious disease epidemiology, there are pathogens that we hope to get rid of in the world, and there are pathogens that we’re never going to get rid of. A pathogen that we’re never going to get rid of, unfortunately, is called endemic, meaning it gets to a stage where we live with it.

It starts out in a pandemic form, causing a lot of severe disease and mortality, and then it settles.

At the beginning of COVID I felt like there was a surprising lack of understanding infectious disease epidemiology, in how public health was responding to it.

It just seemed like there was this idea that we by human behavior can rid a region of a virus. But, I was just surprised because it just didn’t make sense that we could eliminate or eradicate it. It just didn’t make sense in terms of the biology of the virus.

Q: What about the COVID pandemic has been similar to previous pandemics and what’s been different this time around?

A: It was actually most similar, in a way, to the influenza pandemic of 1918, and actually not very similar to its counterparts SARS and MERS. Those two human coronaviruses in this century were really limited in terms of their impact. They had a very high fatality rate, but they didn’t spread very quickly, and we could shut them down quick.

This coronavirus acted much more like influenza, which has a very high mutation rate.

During the influenza pandemic absolutely there were lockdowns, but they were very short. What they were trying to do during that lockdown was get the hospitals ready, figure everything out, figure out how it spread, and tell the population to do other things like wear masks and stay away from each other and stay outside.

It was the most progressive cities that kept the schools open in 1918, and that was really different than this pandemic where the blue state closed their schools for longer than the red states.

Q: In the book you say “public health is a service industry, not a police force.” Can you explain what you mean?

A: Since I am in the field of HIV, I manage a lot of addiction, and I manage a lot of STDs, and in those fields the idea of harm reduction is that people have human needs and society has needs, and you don’t make it just about the pathogen. You deal with the holistic needs of the individual in society, and you incorporate pathogen control into societal and individual needs.

In addiction, if you tell someone to just stop, they’re going to secretly go and use and maybe use with needles that are shared. But if you acknowledge that there’s a true addiction, and addiction is a physiologic state, then if you give them clean needles you can minimize the harm. It’s essentially just acknowledging that addiction is real, acknowledging, for example, that sexual needs are real. Don’t tell people to just stay away from each other.

So what would be acknowledging that with COVID? That school for kids is really needed, or that people get lonely and socially isolated when you’re telling them that they have to stay away from other people. And that can cause other effects, like mental health effects. It’s just kind of putting the problem into the context of other needs.

Using the police and using coercion, I don’t think it is a good way to do public health. Instead, just tell people how to stay safe.

Q: One of your principles for how to deal with future pandemics is “resources before restrictions,” why is that important?

A: The idea is that instead of restricting the entire population, like with mask mandates, capacity limits, closing down businesses, you give resources to those who need it the most. It’s providing resources to do the things that make sense.

If you have COVID, you need to stay home and isolate, so give people a resource or a way to stay home.

We don’t have a universal health care system, so when they shut down the city people were losing their insurance left and right. All these people who had HIV were trying to come to our clinic because they just suddenly lost all their insurance.

You had to provide resources to people when you shut down businesses. Instead you could provide resources for people to test and to stay home when they’re positive, and then eventually get vaccinated, which in my mind is the key to unlock a pandemic.

Q: You identify as “left of left” and you argue for universal health care in the U.S., but a lot of people associate your views on mask mandates and school closings more with conservatives. Can you explain how that happened?

A: I still have a Bernie Sanders sticker on my car from 2016, but I’m even ‘lefter’ than that, and what I mean by that is I’m actually really interested in global poverty. That’s what’s driven me into infectious disease.

What ended up happening with COVID is something got topsy turvy, it got associated with the left to be restrictive, and to close schools. Yet, that response favors the rich. So the public schools in San Francisco are closed for a very long time, but the private schools open more quickly. My children got to go to school but (my patients) didn’t get their kids to be in school, and I felt really guilty.

I felt really bad that I was part of the elite the public health response favored. I used to think about the left as favoring the working class, but the left did not favor the working class in terms of the COVID response.

It just completely confused me. My positions were more consistent with red state governors, and that led to a lot of unease. I felt really uncomfortable in my own skin. I looked towards all my patients, and they’re so lonely. they’re so miserable. They are working and their  8-year-old is at home alone online. Do they see what we we are doing to the poor?

Monica Gandhi, MD

Age: 54

Title: professor of medicine and associate division chief of the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine at UCSF/ San Francisco General Hospital.

Residence: San Francisco

Education: University of Utah, Harvard Medical School

Family: two sons, 13 and 15 years old

Five things about Monica Gandhi

• Really likes Russian novels, reading Dostoyevsky’s “Devils” right now.
• Enjoys dark movies, like Danish films called “Celebration,” except it’s definitely not one.
• Connected to Indian Hinduism, after grieving processes for husband involved a lot of spirituality.
• Got two bonded cats during the pandemic, but one ran away so she got new buddy for her lonely cat, and then the second cat came back, so now she has three cats.
• Just loves being an HIV doctor.

The World Health Organization announced on Friday that COVID is no longer a global emergency, but the pandemic itself isn’t over and COVID continues to evolve.

XBB.1.16, also known as Arcturus, is the newest subvariant of the omicron variant of COVID-19 spreading throughout the U.S. and much of the world. Like many COVID variants and subvariants that came before it, Arcturus is believed to be the most infectious strain of COVID yet.

“It does seem to be more transmissible than the last variant XBB.1.5,” Dr. Timothy Friel, chairman of Lehigh Valley Health Network’s Department of Medicine in Pennsylvania, said. “That’s very telling because we thought XBB.1.5 was perhaps one of the most transmissible viruses that we’ve ever encountered.”

Arcturus hasn’t become the dominant strain of COVID in the U.S. yet — that position is still held by omicron variant XBB.1.5 — but its’ making gains. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that Arcturus accounts for about 12% of all cases nationally. Friel said it may account for as many as 15% of cases in Pennsylvania. Arcturus has been identified in at least 34 countries and in India it is the dominant strain already.

One of the oddest things about the Arcturus subvariant is that it appears to be correlated with increased cases of conjunctivitis, the inflammation of the outer membrane of the eye better known as pink eye. Conjunctivitis is usually caused by bacterial infections, but some viruses, like coronavirus and adenovirus, an agent of the common cold, can cause it too.

Dr. Jeffrey Jahre, St. Luke’s University Health Network section chief emeritus of infectious diseases in Pennsylvania, said the fact that Arcturus can cause pink eye is not in and of itself notable, as other strains of COVID have caused pink eye in about 3% of patients. But pink eye, especially in children and babies, seems to occur more frequently with Arcturus.

“It seems that there is a far greater percentage of individuals with absolute bona fide Arcturus who have conjunctivitis,” Jahre said. “Although absolute conclusive evidence requires a number of repeated observations, in this case, it does appear to be the case.”

He added that with other strains of COVID, it has been rare for pink eye to be the only presenting symptom of a COVID infection, but with Arcturus, this seems to be happening more frequently, though fever also tends to be present.

Friel said that even though pink eye seems to be more likely from an Arcturus infection, coughing and sore throat are still the most common symptoms. If you have any COVID-like symptoms, you should get tested, he said.

Pink eye symptoms include the whites of the eye turning red or pinkish as well as itchiness, gritty feeling, tears, sensitivity to light and discharge that forms a crust that can make it difficult to open the eye.

Jahre said at this time of year when pollen has filled the air, there is a high chance that most cases of pink eye that emerge will be allergy related, but differentiating between allergic conjunctivitis and viral conjunctivitis may be difficult and may require evaluation by an eye specialist.

“If a fever is present, it is more likely to be COVID,” Jahre said. “If another individual in the family has diagnosed COVID, then anyone else in the family experiencing conjunctivitis symptoms should assume that he or she may also have COVID and take appropriate health measures and precautions to avoid affecting others.”

While pink eye isn’t fun, it fortunately usually doesn’t require treatment from a doctor. But Jahre said if the conjunctivitis worsens over 24 hours, then that would be a good indicator to see a physician or an eye specialist.

The good news about Arcturus is that it doesn’t seem any more likely to result in severe COVID-19 illness than any other recent variant, Jahre said. He also said it’s likely that this summer will follow the last couple, where COVID cases and hospitalizations dipped.

Though it’s impossible to know the actual number of COVID cases, due to testing and reporting limitations, other metrics indicate a downward trend since January. Last week the rate of new confirmed COVID hospitalizations was 4 per every 1 million people and there were 1,109 new COVID deaths from April 27 to May 3, down significantly from the peak of 4,109 that occurred from Jan. 5 to Jan. 11.

Jahre said in the last few days there have been fewer than 10 COVID inpatients at all St. Luke’s hospitals combined. Since April 10, LVHN has had fewer than 10 COVID patients hospitalized at any given time among all campuses.

Jahre added that for those most at risk, such as those with compromised immune systems, certain pre-existing health conditions and the elderly, vaccines are still effective at preventing the worst outcomes of a COVID infection.

Jahre said that in the minds of many it may feel like the pandemic is over, but it is still not clear what COVID will ultimately look like in the future and whether it will become a recurring seasonal illness like flu or if it will disappear almost entirely.

“The real test is going to come in the fall when people start spending more time indoors, school starts again, and so on and so forth — that’s when we have seen resurgences,” Jahre said. “We have to be careful before we say this is an over-and-done. If we can get away with not seeing a major resurgence in the fall, particularly the late fall, then I think we can have a lot more security that maybe the worst of all this is truly over.”

The closures of businesses and schools that marked the early days of COVID-19 are long gone, and talk of self-quarantining at home has vanished. The sight of people wearing masks in public has become rare.

Hand sanitizer, cleaning wipes, rubber gloves and toilet paper are back filling the shelves of grocery stores.

For the most part, just over three years since COVID first started popping its disruptive and deadly head up in the United States, people have gone back to living their normal lives.

And COVID data seems to show that things are going pretty well.

In Berks County, for example, this week’s case count reported by the state Department of Health was the lowest it’s been since mid-July 2021.

“We’re in much better shape than we have been,” Dr. Debra Powell, chief of Reading Hospital’s division of infectious disease, said last week.

But that doesn’t mean COVID is completely in the rear-view mirror. People are still getting sick, sometimes severely. And people are still dying.

The pandemic has definitely changed, as has the public response to it. But according to local health experts, there’s still cause to be cautious.

An improving situation

The numbers look good.

Last week Berks saw its lowest reported number of weekly COVID cases in nearly two years. Just 44 people were reported to be infected or reinfected.

The same trend is reflected in the week’s numbers across the state, where only 1,784 new cases or reinfections were reported.

The decrease in cases represents the continuation of a trend. They’ve been dropping significantly for months, taking a nosedive since hitting a holiday-surge peak of 776 in data reported Jan. 4.

Like the case count, hospitalizations and deaths are also down. The state has reported five weekly deaths or less in Berks each week since the start of February, and hospitalizations of COVID patients in the county have been in single digits for five straight weeks.

“The numbers are down,” said Dr. Mohammad Ali, an infectious diseases physician at Penn State Health St. Joseph. “We had a small spring break increase, but now cases are going down. And deaths and hospitalizations are down.

“We’re seeing that in our hospital, in our hospital system. The pandemic is kind of slowing down at the moment.”

Powell said community transmission rates look really good, meaning the virus isn’t spreading as quickly as it has before.

That’s probably because now, more than three years into the pandemic, most people are at least partly protected from it.

“Most people now have had a vaccine or the disease, so they have at least partial immunity,” she said. “So unless we have a really unusual variant show up that we don’t have immunity for, I don’t think we’ll being going back to closing things down.”

Ali said much the same.

“The good news is that since we’ve had this for a few years, we’ve had lots of infections and vaccines,” he said. “We have pretty good background immunity in the population. People have enough protection against severe infection and hospitalization.”

The pandemic situation has improved so much that President Joe Biden this month ended a national COVID emergency declaration. The move — which the president made about a month before the emergency was set to expire — had an impact on local hospitals.

Powell said that because the emergency ended — along with improved local COVID data — the West Reading facility ended its mask mandate. Now patients, staff and visitors no longer need to wear masks inside the hospital.

“It was a very thoughtful decision on masking, we had been watching the numbers closely for the last month,” Powell said. “Honestly, our staff were very excited to be able to see their patients again.

“The day that we took our masks off, people were really excited. It seemed like the end of a stage at that point, that we were getting more back to normal.”

Urging for caution

While it seems clear the pandemic is improving greatly, it doesn’t mean COVID has vanished for good.

Powell and Ali expressed optimism about the current situation but urged caution. They said the virus has been shown to mutate swiftly and can still pose a dire risk to certain segments of the population.

“There is some good new, but there is some caution we should be aware of,” Ali said. “People have forgotten about it, but I don’t think we should because it’s still out there.

“And there are still individuals out there not fully protected. It’s still dangerous for people who are old or have certain health conditions. And there are millions of people on medications that don’t let their immune systems work properly.”

Ali said that, for the most part, people who are young and generally healthy will likely have no or just minor symptoms if they get COVID. At worst, it will be akin to a common cold.

But the elderly and people with serious health conditions, in particular those that impact the immune system, could wind up hospitalized or even dead if they get COVID.

“People at high risk should still be cautious,” he said. “Especially if they’re moving in an environment with lots of people. There’s nothing wrong with them masking appropriately.

“When you’re using a mask and no one else is, you’re kind of the odd person out now. But if you need to wear a mask there’s no harm in doing it.”

Powell said she believes COVID will continue to exist on a low level in the background, similar to something like flu. That means people at risk of having a severe reaction to it should remain cautious.

She also said the virus could still change in a way that could move it back to the forefront.

“This virus will continue to mutate,” she said. “If a variant has any more infectiousness, it may get some traction.”

That was the case with a variant that recently popped up in India, Ali said. That country saw a pretty big spike in cases, however it was not so severe that it stressed India’s health care system.

There is also a variant spreading in southern Australia — a combination of the omicron and delta variants — that caused increased cases there, Ali said.

“They have the potential to spread here and cause a little bit of a spike,” he said.

Tracking the new variants may get more difficult in the weeks and months to come, Ali said. As the public health emergency goes away, he said, there will be less robust tracking of the disease.

“We could be flying a little blind,” he said. “We might not know before something happens. And once you start seeing more hospitalizations it’s too late — there will be lots of pain before we can fix it.”

Vaccinations still key

The rapid creation and distribution of COVID vaccines has played a large part in the battle against the pandemic.

It has helped protect millions against severe infection and was the most important tool for getting lives back to normal. And that’s still the case moving forward, Ali and Powell said.

Both said the focus is now on the newest version of the vaccine, known as a bivalent vaccine. That was introduced in the fall in response to the omicron variant.

If someone has not received that vaccine, Powell and Ali recommended that they do.

“I think it’s a good idea, no matter what age group, to get that as soon as possible,” Ali said. “I think it’s a good idea because it will still give you good protection from infection until fall.”

Powell said data shows less than 14% of people in Berks have gotten the bivalent vaccine.

“It’s kind of low right now,” she said. “I encourage people to get it.”

For those who did get the bivalent vaccine, they might be able to now get a booster.

Powell said it’s recommended that people over 65 years old get a booster four months after they get their first dose. Those who are immunocompromised can get a booster two months after their first dose.

And there might be a new booster that everyone can get this fall. Officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are discussing the issue, Ali said.

Powell said she thinks COVID vaccines boosters will become a yearly thing, similar to the flu vaccine.

“That’s what I predict, I think we’ll see this as an annual vaccine,” she said. “I think we’ll have recommendations for both flu and COVID.”

Ali said he also imagines more boosters will be on tap, however he said it doesn’t think they’ll be seasonal like the flu. COVID hasn’t shown to act seasonally, he said.

“If a variant starts somewhere else and gets here it doesn’t matter what season it is,” he said.

Across the country, an average of nearly 300 people died from the virus every day in March. Who is dying still?

“They tend to be over 75,” said Dr. Chin-Hong, a UCSF professor of medicine who specializes in infectious diseases. “And they tend to have gotten the first two shots in December of 2020 but didn’t get a booster,” he said, reminding those who are over 65 or eligible to get the most recently available booster.

“Age is the most powerful risk factor,” said Chin-Hong. “It’s still the same group in the hospital that I’m seeing, even though it’s fewer.”

COVID hospitalizations have been declining since a winter surge, approaching but not quite reaching the lows we saw in the summer of 2021.

Along with stronger population immunity from infections and vaccinations and low community spread, Chin-Hong has noticed another factor that might be contributing to better outcomes and fewer deaths. “There’s more comfort in Paxlovid,” he said, pointing to the trend over the past six months with Pfizer’s anti-viral medication to treat the illness.

“At some points in the pandemic there were a lot of fears about Paxlovid,” he said, including high-profile reports of “rebound” infections after taking the drug. But now? New evidence suggests the rebound infections can happen at a similar rate without Paxlovid use, and primary care physicians are getting more familiar with the drug. “I think there’s more comfort in health care providers and prescribing it.”

Now, on the heels of mask mandates ending in many places, the national COVID emergency is set to end in May, and with it the availability of the free at-home test kits. You have a few days left to order more tests for your household from the federal website if you have yet to reach the limit.

Experts warn that COVID outbreaks are not a thing of the past. After mandatory masking in medical facilities was lifted in California in early April, it didn’t take long before Kaiser Permanente’s Santa Rosa Medical Center had a COVID outbreak, with more than a dozen staff and patients testing positive, prompting them to reinstate their mask mandate last week.

And as many of the structural protections disappear, it is also getting harder to track how prevalent the virus is in the community. For those who are elderly or immunocompromised or who simply would like to continue taking precautions to lower their risk of catching the virus, case data is becoming increasingly unreliable as a way to assess relative risk.

“The only parameter that I think is really good for having an idea where we are right now is the wastewater data,” said Swartzberg, referring to ongoing monitoring for the virus at community wastewater plants. Swartzberg uses that data to help influence his own choices about attending large gatherings and masking.

Despite a slight increase in positivity rates in COVID tests recently in the state, wastewater data and hospitalizations show a continued decline of community spread.

Daily COVID tests, however, are being logged in the lowest numbers since tests were being rationed in the first months of the pandemic, both because fewer people are testing when they feel sick and fewer at-home test results are being reported to authorities. That means our official counts are capturing a smaller percentage of cases. “When you can’t look up and see how much community disease there is,” Swartzberg noted, “how do you do your calculus?”

As for what to expect in the near future, we are in a good spot right now, but as Chin-Hong points out, “when you’re low like this, there’s only one way to go.”

Swartzberg is thinking much the same as during previous lulls. “Is this the calm before the storm, or is the way it’s going to be?”

The answer to that question is one thing that has stayed the same, he said: “Nobody knows.”

The Home Test to Treat Program is run by the National Institutes of Health and the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response through the U.S. Department of Human Services. The state Department of Health will help administer the program.

The program is designed to learn more about home testing and treatment programs and how they can be used as a defense against COVID.

“The Department of Health is committed to creating health equity across Pennsylvania,” Dr. Denise Johnson, acting secretary of health and physician general, said in a statement announcing the pilot program. “The Home Test to Treat pilot program is a step toward that goal, and we are excited that Berks County was chosen as the first in the nation to pilot this important program.”

A total of 8,000 Berks residents will be able to enroll in the program, which will provide testing, telehealth consultations and the delivery of anti-viral medication at zero cost to eligible community members. Information on how to enroll will provided soon, according to the state Department of Health.

Once enrolled, participants will be eligible to receive at-home rapid tests by mail. If they test positive for COVID-19, they will be invited to participate in a telehealth consultation with a medical provider and can receive, at no cost to the participant, antiviral medication delivered to their home or for pick-up at a local pharmacy.

Participants should not wait until they are sick to sign up for the program.

“The county of Berks is honored to be selected as the first community to pilot this nationwide program,” said Stephanie Weaver, the county’s public relations officer. “Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the county has further developed partnerships within our community that allow us to implement exciting new programs like this.

“We hope our residents will take advantage of these new, free resources and in turn be better prepared to detect and treat COVID-19 when it strikes.”

To participate in the program, individuals must be at least 18 years old, have an email address, speak English or Spanish and consent to participate in the pilot program.

For more information on the pilot program visit doyourpartberks.com/home-test-to-treat.

At that point, my life changed drastically since I always had celebrated holy Mass every single day in a church with a congregation present. Then, we are told to celebrate Mass but without a public, without parishioners, which by the way is very unusual, strange and peculiar for priests.

We were told to go viral. I was confused since I am really a dinosaur when it comes to technology.

I teach Spanish at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, and I am the professor who is known as “talk and chalk.” I do not use any kind of technology — no films, tape recorders, projectors, etc. My world is so ancient to the seminarians that after telling the class that I was “Father Talk and Chalk,” a student proceeded to ask, “What is chalk?”

However, my first reaction was to call a local IT man — someone who knows about technology. He was wonderful and came to provide me with a camera to video our Masses since our doors were closed shut. From that time, I taped two Masses every day in the chapel in the rectory — one in English and one in Spanish since I have a bilingual, multicultural parish.

When my parishioners after about six months were allowed to return to Mass, I moved the camera to the inside of the church. There I began to tape my Masses.

Some parishioners, and even until today, were hesitant about returning to church during the pandemic.

So, every day now I continue to tape Mass and continue to do so for those who are afraid to come to church, those who are ill, those who are homebound, those in nursing homes, etc.

After taping in both languages during the pandemic, I realized the large number of Spanish-speaking parishioners returning to Mass. As a result, now I say Mass on Tuesday and Thursday in English and Wednesday and Friday in Spanish.

Each day, the gospel is read in both languages and the preaching is done in English and Spanish. On the weekends, my Masses on Saturday evening are both taped since the first one is in English and the second one is in Spanish. Of course, these Masses count for the Sunday obligation as they are the Vigil Masses.

I continue to tape Masses almost every day. Many English-speaking parishioners have not returned to the church yet. They continue to be timid about coming to church. My Spanish-speaking congregation has returned to all Masses with a vengeance. My Spanish Masses are jammed.

However, I continue to tape for the Spanish-speaking congregation since some parishioners are ill and homebound. In fact, some are still recuperating from having COVID.

In addition, the newest part of our church is that the taping is available for all festivities. For example, Mass was taped for Our Lady of Guadalupe Celebration on Dec. 12 since it is a great religious and social commemoration of the appearance of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico and some people missed it. Christmas was also taped.

The biggest asset to our taping is that for all parishioners weddings, anniversaries, quinceañeras and funerals are taped for those who might be far away in another state in the United States, but also for those in other countries since my congregation is so multicultural. For weddings the taping provides the entire family both here and in Latin America a chance to celebrate together. This taping is especially worthwhile and important for funerals as those abroad can also participate in the wake and funeral Mass celebrated at St. Patrick Church.

So, as you can see my world has changed, and I have had to change, too.

I am no longer a dinosaur since I have had to learn about technology, cameras, videos, sound, etc.  However, I am still in the “toddler” stage of learning and working with technology, but with time and patience, perhaps I will soon be able to become like my students and be “fluent” in technology.

One of the areas seeing lasting change is virtual instruction, since districts have witnessed shifts from in-person, to online, back to in-person instruction, and now seeking what’s coming next.

North Penn School District is a large suburban district in Montgomery County and is currently offering two types of online instruction with key differences between them.

The district Virtual Academy is offered for secondary students in grades seven through 12, with asynchronous education — prerecorded, instead of live streaming from classrooms — provided by district staff.

“We have live employees who are their teachers of record. That does not mean that they are live teaching to the kids, but rather the kids are working their way through asynchronous content, and the teacher is available to provide support, answer questions, communicate with parents,” said Assistant Superintendent Todd Bauer.

For elementary students in kindergarten through sixth grade, the program is different: live synchronous instruction is offered, with two sections for each grade, except for second grade which has three sections.

The elementary instruction numbers have dropped by roughly one-third since the start of the 2021-22 school year, and the 15 teachers in that elementary program are at various schools across the district, while the seven Virtual Academy teachers are all based at the district’s Northbridge School.

“While they have their live, in-person students, they are also the teachers of record for the North Penn Virtual Academy students,” Bauer explained.

The 2019-20 school year started in person and shifted to fully online after the arrival of COVID, 2020-21 included a hybrid option with families able to choose whether their students would stay home and stream lessons from classrooms.

That hybrid offering wasn’t available initially for 2021-22, but when community COVID transmission rates spiked in October, families were able to choose the streaming option, until mid-February when those transmission levels fell again.

Future still uncertain

What will virtual instruction look like in 2022-23 and beyond?

Bauer said that will depend in large part on COVID transmission levels.

“Things seem to be progressing toward what was normal, and we’re hopeful that the streaming will no longer be necessary in the fall, but I do expect that we will have some version of our virtual academy, that is somewhere in between what it was in 2019-20 and what it currently is in ’21-’22,” he said.

“I think that some of our students and families have learned that the online instructional model works best for them,” he added.

Staff have heard of students choosing to stay online due to health issues, anxiety about returning to in-person, or a desire to stay home and have more flexibility. As for teachers, for the most part their feelings are clear.

“One thing we know, loud and clear, is that teachers do not like the hybrid version,” Bauer said.

“Most of our teachers are agreeable to teaching one way or the other, virtual or in-person, but I think everyone prefers in-person. That’s why we get into education: the relationships. Doing it online, while we’re doing a great job of it, I think the preference is to have kids in the classroom,” he said.

At North Penn, typical of large suburban districts, the total number of students in both forms of online instruction is less than 5% of total enrollment.

“These combined numbers are under 500 across the whole district, with about 12,500 who are in person,” Bauer said.

What about hardware?

The level of investment in technology will be a big part in determining the future of education delivery.

At North Penn, that investment was dramatic: In the summer of 2020 the North Penn School Board authorized purchases of new monitors and stands to allow for the live streaming from classrooms to students watching from home, and Bauer said all of that equipment is still in place, and in regular use.

“All of those components are still in classrooms, and still being used on a fairly regular basis, and not just for that purpose. Teachers can plug into it, and use it as another presentation station, or kids can use it to give their presentations,” he said.

“We used to just have a projector in the classroom, but now we have a projector and a monitor. In the event that a student is streaming from home because they have COVID, or they’ve been quarantining, the teacher can turn it on and interact with students that way.”

And how does the district’s online education compare to that provided by private online cyberschools?

One difference is the price tag: district staff have calculated that costs are roughly $5,000 to the district to educate a student online, while cyberschool tuitions tend to be around $15,000.

“For what they charge $15,000 for, we believe we’re able to do for more like $5,000. And keep in mind, we have a physical facility that we need to maintain, and we have teachers in our buildings for the virtual academy,” Bauer said.

“I am very confident that, if we compared our state testing scores, to those that do not attend our schools, I would expect that ours are higher,” he said.

Students are also able to go back and forth between online and in-person more easily if enrolled in North Penn’s virtual programs, and the lessons learned from the past three years of online instruction may also play into a conversation that’s just restarting now: whether the district should add a ninth-grade center at North Penn High School to move students there from the three middle schools.

“We’ve been touring some high schools, to get some ideas for our high school renovation project, and that is absolutely a topic of conversation,” he said.

“We have to think about the next 30, 40, 50 years, and what education could look like, and I think the last two years have taught us a lot about the fluidity of students being in the buildings versus not, and programmatically what are the impacts of that. How will it impact that project, I can’t say, but it is absolutely a topic of conversation as we prepare for that significant renovation.”

Rural districts

With the numbers for COVID-19 down, the rural southern Chester County Kennett Consolidated School District is embracing technology like never before.

“If it is possible, technology has become an even more indispensable part of our everyday life,” Superintendent Dusty Blakey said. “It is our responsibility to continue to equip every one of our 4,000-plus children with critical digital literacy skills and 21st-century college and career prospects.”

The technology department staffers now support district-issued devices for every student.

“Not only have the laptops and software made remote and hybrid instruction possible,” said KCSD Technology Director Dan Maguire, “they also continue to create an empowering learning environment for all of our students.”

Adequate funding is key. The district’s individualized device program will ultimately be sustained within the general operating budget.

This year, the district has also begun a partnership with the Chester County Intermediate Unit, among others. The initiative aims to establish equitable access for all residents who wish to learn, work and play at home using high-speed broadband.

At the same time, new Kennett High School degree programs like business administration, coding and media communications help digital natives further develop marketable skills.

“Technology is continually changing the landscape of our working world,” high school Principal Jeremy Hritz said. “KHS degree programs are intentionally developed to teach today’s most innovative tech and to help students envision themselves at the center of tomorrow’s industries.”

In addition to traditional classroom instruction, students enrolled in one of these specialized pathways will complete job shadowing, internship and research experiences.

“This is just the beginning of our plan to transform K-12 education,” Hritz said. “We want to nurture the next generation of future entrepreneurs, where college programs and careers will be driven by artificial intelligence and automation.”

District staffers say that thanks to warehouse LinkIt, Kennett’s educators also have more information than ever at their fingertips. The new-to-the-district data warehouse allows all to see real-time insights on their students’ achievement from a single location.

“In our professional development this year, we’ve focused on training our teachers to analyze information and implement personalized interventions,” Maguire said. “Our goal at the end of the day is to always maximize every student’s growth.”

Urban challenges

The more urban Reading School District initiated one-to-one technology at the start of the state-ordered shutdown in spring 2020 and distributed 16,500 Chromebooks, prioritizing high school students first, followed by middle school students and then elementary students.

Currently, all Reading School District students have a school-issued Chromebook to use at school and at home, that district said in a statement to MediaNews Group.

Reading School District was on full virtual learning from March 2020 through April 2021, when the district began a hybrid learning schedule for the remainder of the 2020-21 school year.

The district reopened full in-person learning in August for the 2021-22 school year. Out of the district’s approximately 18,000 students, 1,560 are enrolled as of late March in the online learning program.

In the past two years, district leaders have focused on providing families with equitable access to technology and addressing the digital divide in Reading, according to that district.

They have developed several partnerships, including working with T-Mobile to distribute hundreds of free mobile hot spots to students and working with Comcast to launch community LiftZones where students could complete school work and receive tutoring assistance.

The district has also covered the cost of home internet for nearly 500 families in need through the Comcast Internet Essentials Program. In addition, the district’s IT team expanded the exterior Wi-Fi footprint at 14 of its school buildings, allowing students even more opportunities to access the Internet in their neighborhoods.

Since returning to full in-person learning, teachers have continued to incorporate technology components, including microphone headsets, online learning centers and educational computer programs to reinforce concepts taught that day.

In addition, use of the Google Education Suite has increased significantly.

For example, most of the high school teachers developed Google Classrooms to communicate more efficiently with students and track assignments, and many clubs still use Google Meet to host their weekly meetings, the district said.

Students at all grade levels are using technology to collaborate and are enjoying exploring Google Forms, Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Sites to complete projects, the district said.

Berks superintendent sees benefits

And the shift from in-person to virtual and back again has left lasting impacts in Berks County, as Dr. Greg M. Miller, Fleetwood School District superintendent noted in a column for MediaNews Group.

“Probably the largest area of growth for all school systems during this time was in the area of technology use. For us in the Fleetwood School District, the professional learning of teachers, specifically on their usage of technology, was enormous. The creative thinking that took place to find ways to interact with students during the closure, as well as how to use technology on a daily basis as schools reopened, was astounding,” Miller wrote.

“Like many districts, Fleetwood was in the midst of a slow shift to a more digital method of delivering instruction. We were balancing the use of books and paper with the use of computer devices and digital content. When all schools in Pennsylvania were forced to move to a fully virtual learning environment back in 2020, the shift occurred immediately for everyone. While I do not want anyone to think that I advocate for students being in front of a screen full time, there are some benefits of students having access to digital content. Our district went from being roughly 40 percent of our students having district-issued computers to fully one to one practically overnight. The amount of teacher learning and change to be able to function in such an environment was tremendous. The benefit I see now is students and teachers who are able to interact virtually when necessary,” Miller wrote.

One key benefit that no one could have anticipated before?

Miller wrote that he’s seen high school students now taking college courses online during study halls, while still in high school, while others who might have missed out on classroom interactions due to medical needs can now stay in touch with their classmates while recovering, interactions that may be helpful to their recovery.

“The use of videoconferencing tools has made it so much easier to collaborate, whether it is staff members across buildings, the state, or even further. It has allowed parents to no longer need to miss work to come to a parent conference. They can simply Zoom into a meeting with teachers during their lunch break. Finally, we have seen opportunities for students who are able to take the idea of pen pals to a whole new level, meeting virtually with students from other countries,” Miller wrote.

“While we all certainly recognize the challenges brought on by COVID-19 as well as the devastating loss of life that has occurred, we can also recognize that like many challenges in the past, COVID-19 has given our schools and communities a significant opportunity to rise to the challenge, learn important lessons and improve our current systems for generations to come,” Miller wrote.

In a letter to the community, Radnor Superintendent Ken Batchelor wrote that the week ending April 1, there were 34 new COVID cases reported to the district by families and staff. The 34 new cases were up from 11 the prior week.

In the letter dated Wednesday, April 6, Batchelor said they had already had another 30 COVID cases reported that week.

Along with the COVID increases, Batchelor said they learned the area also saw an increase in the flu and common cold.

“Historically, over the last two years, we have experienced significant Covid spread during and after school breaks. With this knowledge in hand and based on our current rates of spread and the possibility for increased spread over Spring Break, we will have a virtual day of instruction on Monday, April 18 (the day after break) to allow students and staff ample time to take a Covid test before returning to school, if interested,” according to the letter.

The latest increase in cases is likely related to a rise in other parts of the country due to the latest COVID variant, BA.2.

Health officials have said the new variant is faster spreading than previous versions.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, cabinet members, including Attorney General Merrick Garland, and some lawmakers tested positive for the virus after many of them attended a super-spreader gala event at the Gridiron Club in Washington. The event has been described as a primarily maskless event. NBC News reported Sunday that 72 people who were at the event have since tested positive for the virus.

Back in Radnor, district officials say during the April 18 virtual day, the district will also hold a free drop-in COVID testing all day for students and staff interested in receiving a test.

“With Spring Break only days away, I have noticed many students and staff have chosen to wear a mask. Please remember, the District has a supply of surgical and KN95 masks for any interested staff member or student,” Batchelor wrote.

More information on pre-registering for an April 18 test can visit the Radnor Township School District website.

Noone, who taught biology, applied sciences and anatomy since 1999, got into teaching late in life, so she had not intended to go a full 30 years in education.

But she had hoped to make it to 2022.

That is when a new teaching contract is to be negotiated and retirement incentives are likely to be offered by the district in an effort to reduce payroll by replacing higher-paid teachers with newer, lower-paid ones.

“But COVID pushed me out the door,” she told MediaNews Group.

Her husband had gone through two bouts of chemotherapy for non-Hodgkin lymphoma and it was not immediately clear if his immune system would benefit from a vaccine as much as a healthy person’s.

After teaching virtually for months, and with a scheduled back surgery coming up over the Christmas holiday, Noone decided she did not want to return to the classroom and put her husband’s health at risk.

She has another friend in the district near retirement “who is thinking about pulling the trigger a little sooner than she thought she would. It’s been a tough couple of years and for those close to retirement, it definitely makes it more tempting.”

These teachers are just two among thousands who left the profession during the pandemic, creating a void in schools that is becoming increasingly hard to fill.

The new math

It’s no secret that during the pandemic, many people either lost their jobs or left them — some unwilling to put themselves and their families at risk for low pay, others simply re-evaluating their work-life balance in the face of a worldwide crisis.

At 4.4 million, the number of Americans quitting jobs was historically high in February. More than 4.5 million people quit in November, the most in two decades of records, according to the Associated Press.

And a higher percentage of those who walked away worked in education than in other fields, the expansion of an existing trend.

The nation, and Pennsylvania in particular, was already suffering from a feeble supply of new teachers before the pandemic hit. COVID only made it worse.

According to a June 2021 survey of 2,690 members of the National Education Association, 32% said the pandemic drove them to plan to leave the profession earlier than expected, AP reported.

Another survey by the Rand Corp. said the pandemic exacerbated attrition, burnout and stress on teachers, who were almost twice as likely as other employed adults to feel frequent job-related stress and almost three times more likely to experience depression.

And it’s not just teachers.

There has even been an exodus of top-level administrators. In 2021-22, Pottsgrove, Boyertown, Owen J. Roberts and Spring-Ford all hired superintendents.

In Pottsgrove, longtime high school Principal William Ziegler and Assistant Principal Eric Daney both moved on to other jobs before the school year even finished.

Others, like bus drivers and food workers, were idled, either voluntarily or not, when school buildings closed and learning was delivered remotely.

With no students to transport or feed, there was no work at school, so many found work elsewhere. With school back in session, many of those positions remain open and hard to fill.

The challenge — or rather one of the dozens of challenges now faced by schools — has been to replace those people now that schools are back in session.

Some of those challenges are being met in innovative ways invented during the pandemic, while others remain, well, challenging.

‘This is too much’

“We’re still not fully staffed,” Matthew Boyer, director of human resources for the Pottstown School District said in late March.

Boyer saw the COVID-driven staff challenges from two perspectives. When the pandemic first hit, he was serving as the principal of Pottsgrove Middle School, a post he had held since 2017. Then in 2021, mid-pandemic, he returned to Pottstown as a central office administrator.

When he was still a principal, “I was talking to teachers last March and with the virtual learning, and the masks, they were saying ‘this is too much’ and they would be retiring or just leaving,” Boyer said.

Then, when he became an administrator in charge of hiring, “we couldn’t hire until we knew when school would be starting and we still had positions open in October. That meant people were being switched into different positions and that led to more teachers saying ‘I’m done,’ ” he said.

Finally, when schools reopened, “you basically had kids who had been out of school for two years so some of the student behavior problems were off the chart,” said Boyer.

And the stresses go beyond the traditional classroom teacher.

“It’s not just teachers, it’s nurses, custodians and paraprofessionals,” he said referring to aides who work in the classrooms with teachers, facing all of the same difficulties and virus exposure for much less money.

“That is my hardest hire. They can go work at Amazon and make $18 an hour,” said Boyer.

As a result, Pottstown has added pay incentives to attract and retain both paraprofessionals and nurses.

Turn to technology

So what else is a personnel director to do?

What everyone did, of course, was turn to technology.

“We now have a much-improved hiring process. We can do it on Zoom,” Boyer said. “We just hired a guy who lives in California. Before COVID, that never would have happened.

“We also have a standard questionnaire and we video-record the applicant responses. That way, several people can watch the video on their schedule, and the applicant doesn’t have to come in five times to see five different people and answer the same questions.”

At Spring-Ford Area School District, where teacher pay is higher than in Pottstown, there were still dozens and dozens of teachers leaving.

“We do have quite a few teacher retirements coming up at the end of the year,” said Elizabeth Leiss, district director of human resources.

So, to “get a really good jump on the hiring season,” the district held a job fair last month, attracting 140 visitors, she said.

“It’s kind of a one-stop-shop,” said district Superintendent Robert Rizzo. “It’s a great way to expedite the process and make it more personal.”

Bus drivers: ‘A lot of them moved on’

School bus drivers are among those driven from their jobs by the pandemic.

Just ask Dennis Ryan and John Coakley.

They are the program administrator and assistant program administrator for transportation at the Berks County Intermediate Unit, respectively.

The agency not only provides regular school bus service for the Reading and Muhlenberg school districts but other more specialized services for all Berks County districts.

The agency has 250 bus runs per day, some of which are 100 miles long. And lately, many of those runs are completed with Ryan and Coakley behind the wheel.

“We were out this morning and we’ll be out again this afternoon,” Coakley said with a laugh during a midday phone interview.

“It’s all hands on deck,” Ryan added.

“It’s been very difficult for us. This whole industry was struggling before the pandemic, and the pandemic really broke the back of the school bus industry,” Ryan said.

He has been in the business for 15 years, starting as a school bus driver to make money while attending college, and running school bus systems in districts in Chester and Delaware counties.

Since he arrived at the BCIU at the beginning of 2021, Ryan has hired more than 80 drivers, meaning the agency lost more than 30% of its drivers during the pandemic.

“That’s quite a turnover rate,” he said.

That’s partly because the driving jobs disappeared when the students stayed home to learn.

“With no hours to work, a lot of them moved on to something more sustainable,” Ryan said. “They could go to Target and get a job with better pay and benefits. And a lot of them did.”

The shortage also occurred because of who most bus drivers are.

The industry has long leaned on retired seniors to drive school buses and, with the elderly at greater risk for COVID infection and more severe impacts from those infections, the potential risk was too high for many.

As a result, employee losses were higher at school bus operations than in some other industries.

Not to mention, “it’s not an easy job, to begin with, keeping an eye on 40 or 50 kids while driving a 30,000-pound vehicle,” Ryan said.

Pay and incentives

One of the most significant things the BCIU is doing is raising bus driver pay by nearly 23%. The lowest-paid drivers saw their pay rise $4 from $17.55 to $21.55 per hour. The most experienced drivers now make $25.75 per hour.

Reliable drivers also get a perfect attendance bonus every quarter for those who do not miss a shift.

Another change the pandemic forced is looking at reducing the requirements to become a school bus driver.

Pennsylvania has some of the most stringent requirements in the country for those who looking to get behind the wheel of a school bus. Ryan said there is talk of removing a requirement to name engine parts to get certified, what he called the under-the-hood requirement.

“We have mechanics who work on the buses and a driver still does a walk-around inspection to make sure a bus is safe to drive before leaving on a run, but it’s not like they’re going to repair the bus on the road,” he said.

Work in progress

“Overall, the school bus industry didn’t respond well and we’re just now starting to look at our demographics and realizing people need more money and full-time wages,” Coakley said.

But despite these improvements, the struggle continues. When they have to, BCIU has had to merge some routes, and split others.

Ryan said he came away from a recent conference by the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials with the conclusion that “we’re all doing everything we can to try to resolve these issues and changing what can be changed to fix it for the future, but as of now, there is no silver bullet.”

What comes next?

The pandemic may have put a sharper focus on Pennsylvania’s teacher shortage, but don’t expect the supply of new teachers to increase any time soon.

In the past 10 years, “Pennsylvania has experienced a 66% decline in the number of entry-level teaching certificates to in-state college graduates, and a 58% decline in certificates issued to out-of-state graduates,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported recently.

“In the 2010-11 academic year, Pennsylvania granted 21,045 new education certifications — basically a state license that says a graduate is qualified to teach — according to the state Department of Education. By the 2019-20 academic year, that figure had dropped to just below 7,000,” the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported in January.

And the trend is not just in Pennsylvania.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the United States had a net loss of 65,000 public education workers in the year ending with October.

“This is not sustainable, and we anticipate it will continue to get worse,” Rich Askey, the president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, Pennsylvania’s largest teachers union, told a Senate Democratic Policy Committee hearing in January.

Making the situation more difficult is a growing shortage of people interested in being substitute teachers.

In December, Gov. Tom Wolf signed Act 91, making it easier to be a substitute teacher, lifting restrictions on inactive certifications and the number of days that can be worked, among other things.

But it is a stop-gap measure at best, and it can be even harder to recruit a regular supply of substitute teachers than full-timers.

That shortage has left many teachers tasked with covering empty classrooms during planning time, adding one more straw to the camel’s already-strained back.

Fewer available teachers kick a set of broader policy questions up the chain of command in public schools. How do you deliver education with fewer delivery people?

Potential scenarios

Barring sizeable pay increases, decided individually by 500 school boards and less plausible in lower-wealth school districts, the most immediately obvious alternatives include larger class sizes and more remote learning.

“We may get to the point where a teacher may not want to teach a class much larger than 25 or 30, but they can do a virtual class of 50,” said Boyer.

What would that look like in the long run?

“If we have 300 virtual students and 200 of them are at the high school, that’s a big change. Do we even need such a big building?” Boyer pondered.

But teaching a class is more than just standing in front of students, said the recently retired Noone. It’s grading papers, tests and homework.

“An increase in class size is not going to get any more people to want to go into teaching,” she predicted. “Say it brings the total number of students you’re responsible for from 120 to 200. That’s not palatable for anyone. The last thing teachers need is more on their plate.”

Leaning more into virtual also takes away from the value in education that comes from personal relationships teachers develop with students, helping them explore options for their future, she said.

“Getting to know the students, finding out what their interests are, developing those relationships those million little conversations you have over the course of the school year, those are so important,” Noone said.

John Armato, the Pottstown School District’s director of community relations and a member of the school board, couldn’t agree more.

“Technology gives us a lot more options, and creates more opportunities and still allows us to be focused on our mission,” said Armato, long a proponent of the value of personal relationships.

He has a warning for becoming overly virtual in education.

“We may soon have to judge what we’re losing by doing too much through screens. We’re losing that personal contact,” Armato said. “Five or 10 years from now, we’ll start to see the impact of what we’re doing now.”

“The bottom line is the virtual elements are never going away,” said Boyer.

“We had to figure out how to do it on the fly on March 12, 2020, and a lot of people needed training to do that, but some of the younger folks figured it out real quick and they are the ones who are coming up now,” he said.

Perhaps they will be the ones to solve the puzzle, he added.

Whatever future school holds for children, nothing is set in stone. What does seem sure is that public education will never be the same after the pandemic.

“Right now, everybody is struggling to figure out what we do next,” Boyer said. “It already feels like such a long time ago, but it was only last year.”

As COVID made it tougher for nonprofit organizations in southeastern Pennsylvania to do everything from serving clients to raising funds, the pandemic also made it clear just how much those charities were needed.

People whose lives were upended and finances hurt turned to nonprofits in higher numbers than ever, and in most cases received the help they sought.

And now two years after the pandemic started, and with COVID cases at their lowest totals since its beginning, there are still more people in need than before, with charitable groups still finding ways to assist them.

Olivet Boys & Girls Club of Reading & Berks County, for example, is providing more services than pre-pandemic, such as launching Hubs of Hope, an initiative to serve youth and families by connecting multiple local services, including clothing closets, mental health services and academic support.

That program was necessary as the pandemic created added academic challenges and mental health issues for students as evidenced by the increase in phone calls from parents seeking help, said Chris Winters, club president and CEO.

“We now have better relationships with the kids than ever,” he said.

What has allowed Olivet and other nonprofits to meet the higher demand is that they are working together, officials said.

Olivet got better at collaborating with community partners including Berks Community Action Progran, the Reading School District, the Reading Recreation Department, the Daniel Torres Hispanic Center and Safe Berks, Winters said.

“We have to keep doing it this way, working with each other and making sure we’re not competing,” he said. “Too many kids need help, and we can’t keep doing it by ourselves.”

Stronger together

The increased need for help with necessities like housing, food, mental health counseling and child care will continue as people rebound from losing jobs and income and adjust to the new normal of post-pandemic society, said United Way of Berks County President Tammy White.

For instance, the pandemic led to higher housing costs that prompted some local landlords to give tenants short notice that the home they’d been renting was now for sale, leaving them displaced, she said.

White spoke about United Way’s resource hotline, where those needing to connect with help can call 2-1-1 for guidance.

Since the pandemic began there have been almost 15,000 calls on the hotline in Berks, with almost half of the calls involving housing assistance and about 20% related to utility bills.

Most of those requests were met, White said, thanks largely to agencies working with one another.

“How everybody has come together is absolutely phenomenal,” she said. “COVID taught us that we are stronger when we work together. We already had a desire to collaborate, but the pandemic reinforced that and also showed how resilient we can be.”

Food solution

Helping Harvest food pantry works with more than 320 partners to distribute food in Berks and Schuylkill counties, and officials there also believe the increased need is long term.

Before the pandemic, Helping Harvest was distributing about 6.5 million pounds of food per year in Berks and Schuylkill, but in 2020 that almost doubled as it handed out 11 million pounds.

While that amount has dropped somewhat, the demand is still far above pre-pandemic levels as many have still not recovered financially from the pandemic, said President Jay Worrall.

Some had their savings decimated or got deeper into debt during the pandemic and turned to Helping Harvest for the first time, he said.

As those people continue to recover financially they still rely on the pantry, knowing that while help with other bills may not be available, at least their food insecurity has a solution, he said.

Helping Harvest has been able to feed them all thanks in part to the generosity of its donors, whose help it will continue to need going forward, he said.

Blood donors adjust

Another nonprofit that has experienced a long-term shift in its operations is Miller-Keystone Blood Center, which provides blood products to 28 hospitals in eastern Pennsylvania and western New Jersey, said President and CEO Peter J. Castagna Jr.

While Miller-Keystone formerly got about 70% of its blood donations from mobile drives at schools, colleges and workplaces, the pandemic made those events impossible for a time, and a shortage of employees increased the challenge, he said.

But now almost 70% of donations are being made at Miller-Keystone’s seven centers and satellite locations set up once per month, Castagna said.

Blood supplies had fallen to crisis levels locally in December and January as COVID cases rose and depleted the number of donors, leading to concerns hospital patients could die due to a lack of available blood.

The supplies are now in better shape, though, not only because fewer people have the virus but because many have adjusted to donating blood at the centers.

“People have responded,” Castagna said. “They’re coming to us.”

Personal contact returning

Fundraising has changed so much for nonprofits since before the pandemic when face-to-face fund drives and office presentations were a big source of contributions.

The switch to online pleas just wasn’t as effective, charity officers said, so the organizations are working to transition back.

With so many employees still working remotely, though, office solicitations have dwindled, meaning personal presentations are going to be crucial, Winters said.

“You can’t just rely on emails to solicit donations,” he said. “You need more personal contact, and more one-on-one meetings, which the pandemic didn’t allow. But now we’re getting back to sitting at tables and telling our stories.”

United Way officials in Berks said it’s been more difficult to secure donors since the pandemic began despite the organization’s efforts to use virtual meetings to promote payroll deduction pledges.

“People give to people, and nothing replaces in-person contact,” White said. “It’s harder to connect on a screen.”

Like a tsunami

Carrie Freeman, chief executive officer of United Way of Southern Chester County, said the biggest change was moving to virtual meetings for all of the nonprofit’s board and volunteer work.

“The camaraderie among volunteers working together for our common cause definitely suffered moving to the virtual meeting format,” Freeman said. “However, for convenience’s sake, we will probably retain the convenience of these virtual meetings.”

The most impacted people during the pandemic were the direct services group who are also the lowest paid, she said.

“They had to go out to work every day and didn’t have the luxury of working from home sitting at a computer,” she said. “They assumed the most risk and many lost jobs due to having to quarantine or stay home with children who had no child care available to them. Many of these folks who were just starting to restabilize have now been hit with inflationary pricing on basic goods. So the need is still out there.”

A Child’s Light, which has Chester County offices in Malvern and Unionville, helps vulnerable and abused children locally and around the world and started right before everything shut down, said founder Leslie Holt.

“A Child’s Light is about supporting kids in an ongoing, substantial way so that not only do they heal but our communities are healthier,” Holt said. “And we cannot do that without happy, healthy children.”

She said the need to help children is not merely greater since the pandemic began, but more like a tsunami.

“The isolation of the pandemic exacerbated every crack in court agencies and more importantly, every dysfunctional family household,” she said. “Thank heaven for our amazing and loyal contributors such as Blue Beards for Charity, The Demos Family Foundation and every friend, family member and community member who recognize how essential A Child’s Light is for abused children.”

Focus on community

Kennett Collaborative, a nonprofit that works to boost Kennett Square and its economy, decided that when tourism died down during the pandemic it would focus more on the people who live in the community and make Kennett a better home, said Bo Wright, executive director.

“Making Kennett a great place attracts visitors. We’ve seen this over the past few years as both residents and visitors alike have enjoyed our placemaking initiatives like the Light Up the Square tree lights and Kennett Blooms plantings and parklets,” he said.

“In addition to the Small Business Response Fund, which distributed over $270,000 in grants to 61 small consumer-facing businesses in the summer of 2020, helping to foster a sense of community to support local businesses has been a key part of our initiatives over the past few years,” he said. “These include everything from stories on local businesses and nonprofits in our weekly Around the Square newsletter to working on street closures for outdoor dining and providing safe and fun outdoor spaces for people to gather.”

He said the organization is looking forward to a full season of events that will bring people to Kennett Square now that people are more able to congregate.

Community support

Manna on Main Street is a Lansdale nonprofit with a reach across most of Montgomery County.

Sheldon Good, director of development and strategic direction, said the nonprofit helps 5,000 individuals each year.

Good said the nonprofit has been offering double the amount of food needed now prior to pre-pandemic times.

“We estimate that we assist about 5,000 individuals in the course of a year,” Good said.

The nonprofit helps people who are food insecure, including seniors.

He said more than 4,000 individuals live below the poverty line in the North Penn region, which includes 100,000 people, meaning those living in poverty represent 4% of the population.

“We serve low-income seniors who are on a fixed income, we serve working families, we serve persons experiencing homelessness. We serve anyone who is in need of our services,” Good said.

“We have learned that Manna has significant capacity and that our staff are resilient and we have an incredibly generous supportive community,” Good said. “We couldn’t do our work without the support of this community.”

Investing in nonprofits

Frances M. Sheehan is president of The Foundation for Delaware County on East State Street in Media, Delaware County.

The foundation worked recently to create an independent county-run health department while partnering with Delaware County Council, which the state approved in March.

“When there is an emergency,” Sheehan said, “if you do not have a strong public health structure, you can just see what can happen to the economy. You can see how dramatically it can impact people’s lives — and we are still not out of it.”

The foundation has distributed funds to regional nonprofits since 2020 to support the missions of the charities to help people in need. Also during the last two years, Citizen Corp of Delaware County organized a volunteer force of 3,000 which Frances praised as being unique to the area.

The nonprofit also focuses on services to help women in maternity.

The foundation funds fellow nonprofits to make a difference while also offering services on the ground. The nonprofit has 10,000 clients, including children, in Delaware County each year.

“By providing direct services we have front line staff that have a really good understanding of what the community needs and that really informs our grant writing philosophy,” Sheehan said. “Further, this is about investing in the nonprofits that are on the ground making a difference.”