Smackover principal explains COVID-19 protocols at meeting
Schools are set to begin on August 24 in Union County and educators across the region are preparing to fully implement and adjust to the new rules and regulations resulting from COVID-19.
Smackover Elementary School principal Holly Strickland spoke during Monday’s Smackover-Norphlet School Board meeting to elaborate on the school’s safety protocols and her expectations going in to the 2020-21 school year.
Strickland began by focusing on the positives.
“We do have a lot to celebrate. We are fully staffed with all our licensed personnel and our back-toschool meetings were very successful,” Strickland said.
Strickland also listed several of the elementary school’s summer improvements, including new paint in the hallways, a class room and in a conference room, along with other decorations.
The school also now has a sensory room.
Strickland also said the parking lot of the school now has a safe zone and that the parking lots in general were repaired.
Strickland went on to announce that the school, as of Monday, August 17, has 337 enrolled students and 48 total staff members.
Next, she went into the overarching areas of focus for the upcoming school year.
“First and foremost is safety, then curriculum and instruction, the in
tegration of technology and our RTI (response to intervention) process,” Strickland said.
She concentrated first on safety.
“For safety, students and staff will wear masks when they cannot social distance. Masks have been purchased by the district for all staff and students, and hand sanitizing and hand washing will be implemented on a daily basis. A limited number of students will be allowed in the hallways during transitions. For an example, when a class has an activity, that class will leave five minutes prior to the next group of students to avoid crossing paths in the hallway,” Strickland said.
Social distancing protocols will also be used in the cafeteria.
Strickland also went over the school’s curriculum and instruction plans, focusing on addressing the need to fill gaps in standards and in general that students may have accrued during the long “summer”.
“We will continue to teach Arkansas standards. Our K-second grades will teach all subject areas, so those will be self-contained classrooms. Our third and fourth grade teachers will be teaching literacy and social studies … and math and science will be third and fourth grade teachers as well,” Strickland said.
She next discussed attempts at recovering from the long gap since school was last in session.
“At the end of the 201920 school year, our curriculum facilitator and teachers met to talk about standards they were not able to cover in the fourth nine-weeks. By doing that, we’ve found out that some standards were covered but not mastered by our students or maybe the teacher was not able to teach that standard at all. In the first weeks of school, we will back up and teach those standards from the previous grade. Some can be integrated into the new instruction,” Strickland said.
Strickland went over how teachers can communicate, using the example of a first grade teacher adjusting to teach standards that a kindergarten teacher was unable to cover.
She also went over the integration of technology.
“The staff and I have come a long way with technology. It was laid in our lap [last semester] … and we’ve made a lot of progress since then. Having that experience, learning things we want to do better, things we want to do different or things we want to change or take out, we will carry that over. That first week or two of school, we will implement blended learning,” Strickland said.
She explained the school will use programs such as Google Classroom with blended learning, or be able to watch their classroom live if they are doing virtual learning.
“The teachers are working hard with the virtual learning, figuring out what’s best for their age group and their own teaching style,” Strickland said.
Strickland also went over how the staff will make efforts to make sure all parents are aware of the school’s available information online and educated in the usage of digital learning tools.
Lastly, Strickland went over the current RTI protocols.
“With response intervention… during the first nine-weeks we will push our [interventionists] into the classroom to support students who still may lack some of the skills they did not get in the [2019-2020] fourth nineweeks… our goal is to close that gap, and bring our students all up to the same page,” Strickland said
She added that RTI meetings will not be held until the end of the first nineweeks to give interventionists a chance to assess and gather information.
Strickland closed by giving an idea of what Smackover Elementary School will look like “on a day-to-day basis.”
“We will open the doors at 7:20 [a.m.]. Students who ride the bus will go to the cafeteria for breakfast or sit in the hallway for as long as we can social distance. At 7:30, teachers will be in the classrooms and students will start going to the classrooms, where they can have downtime and have downtime to read, draw or whatever it is that teacher decides… we will have teachers on each end of the building to greet students as they come in and open doors, and helping them minimize contact with doors and handles. Classrooms are socially distanced … with spaced desks. Students will have access to hand sanitizer and hand washing throughout the day, and will be able to work with a teacher to clean their desks and surfaces,” Strickland said.
The SES principal closed by summing up her view of the plan.
“I feel like we have a good, solid plan to keep our students and staff safe without having a lot of extras added to what our teachers already [do],” Strickland said.