Sometimes life gives you lemons, but 2020 has been on another level.

“We have taken the sourest of lemons and made some pretty good lemonade out of it as a community,” said Jay Curtis, superintendent of Park County School District No. 1.

With little time to prepare, Powell schools transitioned to remote learning in recent weeks, which Curtis called “extraordinarily daunting.”

“I’ve been pleasantly surprised at what we’ve been able to accomplish with the remote learning at this point,” he said.

Students, parents and educators had their lives upended in mid-March, when school buildings across Wyoming suddenly closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic; Powell schools will not reopen this spring.

“We’re all reacting to it,” Curtis said last week. “We’re trying to make the best of it. And I could not be more proud of this district and community and the response that they’ve had to the closures.”

That doesn’t mean it has gone perfectly. For about 7% of Powell students, educators are “struggling tremendously to get them to engage in online learning,” Curtis told the school board last week.

Students must make a good faith effort in their classes, the superintendent stressed.

“Attendance is still mandatory during these times if they want to receive a grade,” Curtis said.

Students can improve their grades from where they stood on March 13 during the closure, Curtis said, but grades will not drop “so long as they’re providing a good faith effort.”

However, if the student isn’t engaging or putting in the effort for remote learning, they will get an incomplete and be required to do the work later — whether that’s during summer school, remediation in the fall or another way, he said.

“We’re not giving kids a free pass. They have to be doing the work in order to get the credit for the classes,” Curtis said. “But at the end of the day, we’re not going to punish kids for having a hard time learning in this new and uncharted territory.”

Educators recognize many factors are at play — a student’s home life, environment and the fact they’re dealing with a traumatic situation. Students were pulled away from their friends, isolated at home and must learn on a computer.

“There are so many variables that go into this, that it’s really impossible to accurately assess with any certainty how much students are learning,” Curtis said, adding that “the accountability is going to have to come when we get them back in front of us.”

The superintendent also said he’s sorry for what everyone is going through this spring, especially high school seniors.

Curtis also extended “a very heartfelt thank you” to parents, staff and the community for the level of support schools have received.

“It’s really an indicator of an amazing community when faced with a problem like this, the way people come together and support one another,” he said.