On Sunday evening, March 15, Jefferson High School Superintendent Tim Norbeck had just arrived at home. He had canceled a motorcycling vacation with friends in the Southwest; that was to have been his first break ever during a school year.
But the world had turned upside down. Amid the accelerating spread of the global coronavirus pandemic, the first few cases of COVID-19 in Montana had emerged a few days earlier. That afternoon, Norbeck had met with county public health officials and other school leaders “just to see if we were on the same page” if schools had to shut down.
That prospect became real sooner than most had thought: At about 7:30 pm, Governor Steve Bullock ordered every public school in the state to close for two weeks beginning the next day, Monday.
