Second semester moves to in person learning February 8

Story by Mia Gatti – Staff Reporter

Starting the second semester of the 2020-2021 school year it will finally start to feel more normal. Students are starting off hybrid for two weeks and then straight to four days a week on February 8th. Mentoring will be during the four day weeks, but still no bronco time. There are some changes being made for this transition to work properly and hopefully stick for the rest of the semester.

Some changes to keep every student and staff member safe this semester start out with an extra lunch shift.

“We are going to spread our lunchroom availability out into the Events lobby (currently doing this in hybrid), multipurpose gym (plan to do this in 4 days/week), and outside is always available if it is a nice day in our picnic area.  We also do rolling dismissal to lunches that teachers manage and send their classrooms at different times to the lunchroom based on groupings within their specific lunch shift,” Tim Collins, Assistant Principal, said. 

In response to lunch shifts changing. Mentoring is coming back every Monday between 3rd and 4th hours. This will allow students to reconnect with their mentoring teacher and class. We will still stick to one-way hallways keeping students away from the face to face contact they can encounter in the halls. The biggest struggle for this new transition will be keeping everyone socially distanced especially with the larger sized classes.

“I am going to do my best to keep my students and myself as safe as possible. I will distance the desks as much as I can, and make sure they are sanitized after each hour. Also, teachers and staff are very concerned with stuffing 1800 students in a building and possibly being exposed. I hope we are able to transition safely from Hybrid to all in-person without having to change our schedule back to Hybrid again after a month or so,” Ty Kohl, social studies teacher, said.

With the precautions being made to keep everyone safe during this transition, this will hopefully allow us to stay with an in-person schedule for the remainder of the school year.