At their February 8th board meeting, the Chino Valley Unified School District Governing Board received input from parents, staff, and administration on how the district should proceed after February 16th. Pre-K – 5th grade students were currently in hybrid instruction where only half of the students were on campus each day and 6th – 12th grade students were in distance learning. After deliberating, the Governing Board voted to have students in all grades, Pre-K through 12th, return to school on a regular schedule where all students are on campus everyday, Monday through Thursday.
The District continues to have safety measures in place such as all students and staff have their temperature taken on arrival to school and per Governor Ducey’s executive order, everyone must wear a face covering. The District continues to sanitize classrooms and other areas on the campus on a regular schedule and there continues to be a focus on hand hygiene including using hand sanitizer and washing hands. Students and parent that still have a concern about the spread of COVID-19 will continue to have a distance learning option.
So far, with two weeks into all in person instruction, it has been a huge success. We are seeing far more families moving from distance learning to in person instruction than vice versa. To our knowledge, we have had no students or staff on district campuses that have been symptomatic or tested positive for COVID-19 during this time. The feedback that I am getting from school principals is that the kids are excited to be back in school full time and teachers are generally excited to be able to teach in front of kids instead of in front of a camera. I visited Del Rio School last week and it was wonderful to hear the squeals, yells, and general student noise on the playground during recess.
On a lighter note, March has been designated as National Reading Month and March 2nd is Read Across America Day by the National Education Association. For those parents that have school aged children I want to encourage you to take time out this month to read with your child. In Chino Valley Schools we will be recording various community members reading and sharing these videos with our students. I will be reading “The Chupacabra Ate The Candelabra” by Marc Tyler Nobleman and illustrated by Ana Aranda, the story of how three goats deal with a hungry Chupacabra.
We are approaching Spring Break which will take place during the week of March 15th. Spring Break marks the beginning of the fourth quarter and the beginning of the end of the school year. In the fourth quarter we focus on state assessments in April and wind up will all of our end of year activities culminating with the Chino Valley High School graduation on May 26th. We are looking forward to what we hope will be a close to normal end to the school year.