Returning Ready to Learn
How Erie's Public Schools and families build a future-ready Erie
On the first day of school, many of our students walked a red carpet into their buildings.
It was quite literally a welcome back.
As I moved from school to school greeting students, families, and staff, I kept thinking about what our planning comes down to: a child walking through the doors, an educator waiting inside, and another opportunity to begin learning.
This year, those doors opened with some new faces too. Erie's Public Schools welcomed more than 80 new teachers, joining hundreds of educators and staff who have committed themselves to our students. Just days earlier, close to 2,000 members of our EPS team gathered for our second annual convocation to celebrate and support the people who do this work every day, give focus for the year ahead, and continue building a culture where our staff know they are valued and are never expected to carry this work alone.
First days bring a lot of energy. But there is also a serious responsibility underneath that excitement.
Our academic outcomes remain well below where they need to be. Teachers are being asked to reach students who bring their whole lives into the classroom with them, including academic needs, family pressures, economic hardship, instability, grief, and worries that do not simply disappear at the school entrance.
What we can do is make sure that when students cross our thresholds, they enter schools organized around the most basic reason they are there: students come to school to learn.
That is the idea behind Return to Learn.
For us, it means getting better at the fundamentals that have always mattered: strong instruction, literacy, mathematics, attendance, relationships, responsibility, and high expectations. Going back to the basics means being deliberate about rebuilding the conditions in which students and teachers can do their best work.
For many Erie families, standard school attire will look familiar. Similar expectations were part of everyday school life in EPS for years before the pandemic. We are restoring a clearer and more consistent baseline for the school day, while not pretending that a collared shirt by itself will change academic outcomes.
Our bell-to-bell expectations for personal electronic devices address a different challenge. Putting phones away will not solve every problem in our schools either, and it is not intended to.
During the school day, students deserve some space from the constant stream of notifications, group chats, and social media that follows them almost everywhere else.
We want students available to their teachers. We want to see young people talking with one another at lunch. We want fewer interruptions competing with instruction and fewer opportunities for an online disagreement to immediately become a hallway conflict. We want students practicing conversation, patience, problem solving, and the increasingly important skill of simply being present with other people.
Clearer expectations around attire can help in a different way. Those expectations give families, students and staff a more predictable standard and can reduce some of the subjectivity that comes with deciding, student by student, what is or is not appropriate for school.
Still, creating an expectation also creates responsibilities for us.
I saw that during our five Return to Learn parent engagement sessions this month.
Hundreds of families came, gathered, asked questions, picked up the polo shirts and school pants we were distributing, and talked with us about what these changes would actually mean when school began.
At session after session, our Chief Accountability Officer ShaQuita Gatewood brought families back to a larger question: What does ready to learn look like before a child even walks through the school doors?
She talked about simple things, like putting the phone on the charger at a set time at night. Getting school clothes ready before morning. Talking with your child about why expectations are changing rather than waiting for a teacher or principal to explain it to them after there is already a problem.
Those conversations captured Return to Learn better than any policy document could.
Families have an important role, but partnership works in both directions. Return to Learn cannot be something a school district does to families. It has to be something we build with them.
And if we ask students to arrive ready to learn, we owe them schools ready to teach.
That starts with instruction.
This year, Erie's Public Schools is renewing its districtwide focus on literacy because reading, writing, comprehension, and communication are foundational to nearly everything else students do.
A kindergartner learning to recognize words and a senior preparing for college, a career, a skilled trade, or military service are at very different points in life. Both need schools that prepare them to think, communicate, solve problems, adapt, and continue learning.
Stronger expectations for students also have to come with stronger support for the educators serving them. As a teacher, I know we cannot demand more from educators without committing to giving them more.
A teacher should not be left alone to solve every academic, behavioral, social, or family challenge that enters a classroom. A principal should not have to figure out where to get assistance. And no one asking for help should be passed from one person to another.
That is one reason we changed how the district supports schools.
We have organized dedicated elementary and secondary support teams, clarified responsibility for student services, and brought together leaders with experience both inside Erie and with proven results in school systems across the country. The point is to bring support closer to classrooms, not farther away.
The people responsible for solving the same problems need to work together. Schools need to know where to turn, and trust that help will follow.
I have also had the support of a school board willing to make tough decisions, invest in the work, and stay focused on results while giving our educators and administrators the space to do their jobs.
My first year in Erie involved a great deal of listening, learning, and rebuilding. This year must be about action and accountability.
We now have a 5-year strategic plan. We have reorganized support around schools.
We have clearer instructional priorities and clearer expectations for the learning environment.
But plans, policies and organizational charts only matter if students experience something better because of them.
We will look honestly at attendance, behavior, school climate, and academic progress.
We will listen to teachers, students, and families. We will recognize what is working, confront what is not, and adjust when the evidence tells us we should.
Students have a role too. We are asking them to come ready to participate, treat classmates and educators with respect, take responsibility when they make mistakes, and ask for help when they need it. We want them to bring their curiosity, ideas, personalities, and ambitions into our schools.
Ultimately, Return to Learn is about more than clothing, phones, or even one school year.
It is about Erie.
The students sitting in our classrooms today will become the ones who shape this city tomorrow. Which is why their success is not simply a school district issue, it is a community necessity.
Welcoming children through our doors is the easy part.
What happens after they cross that threshold is what matters.
Our children are here to learn.
Our job is to make sure they have every opportunity to do it.
Natalyn Gibbs, Ed.D., is the superintendent and CEO of Erie's Public Schools. Learn more about her and her mission to serve Erie's public school students at eriesd.org
