PGISD looking to make school safer, more accessible

TEXARKANA, Texas — Members of the Pleasant Grove Independent School District are making every effort to make the return to school as seamless a transition as possible, through precautionary measures and technological advancements.

In Thursday’s meeting of the Board of Trustees, PGISD officials outlined a plan for bringing students back on campus in 2020. Although the returnto-school packet has not yet been released, they did reveal details of safety items purchased in the midst of the

COVID-19 pandemic.

The products acquired to ensure student safety include:

■ 35,000 disposable masks,

■ 5,300 reusable masks,

■ 8,122 latex gloves,

■ 200 gallons of hand sanitizer,

■ 400 face shields for staff,

■ 30 portable hand sanitizing stations,

■ 180 wall-mount dispensers,

■ 375 gallons of hand sanitizer,

■ 30 noncontact, hand-held thermometers,

■ 280 ultra-spray misters,

■ and six electro-static fog machines.

“We’ve put a lot into making sure that we’re ready for when students and teachers come back.” PGISD superintendent Chad Pirtle said. “We’ll be monitoring those levels to make sure we can place an order when we run out of something.”

Pirtle also said remote instruction for students schooling from home will look

much different than it did in the spring.

The district has invested in document cameras, for students to be able to sit in on and participate in class activity from home. Pirtle said these will be demonstrated in the next board meeting.

Devices will be provided to students who do not have access to such things, as well as hotspots for those without internet access.

“We’ve had time to break the code on remote learning since the Spring, and I believe we’ve done it,” Pirtle said. “We believe it will not matter whether you’re in class or you’re at home. We will still be able to provide each student with the same experience, good instruction, class participation and intervention to ensure high levels of learning for all students, where their education is not dependent on the setting.”

School is still set to begin on Aug. 10.

In other news, the construction of Margaret Fischer Davis Elementary School has been slowed by COVID-19 cases among working crews and a higher-than-expected amount of rain days, according to Nabholz Construction project manager Chris Tyler.

Seventy-five rain days resulted in a lower yield of work done on the school than was hoped for towards the end of June.

And on July 7, news broke that nearly an entire crew tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the production back even further. Subsequently, every worker on the job from June 26 to July 4 was tested. After these tests, a total of 37 laborers tested positive.

“With that, we’re obviously working at a bit of a man-power deficit,” Tyler said. “But we got our Nabholz environmental services down, they did a static fog of the building to disinfect everything. Everybody now has to come to the construction trailer to check in and answer a couple famous coronavirus questions, and anyone with a temperature over 100 has to go home.”

The job is continuing, as Nabholz is expecting the bulk of their labor force back early next week, but Tyler said they are taking the COVID-19 situation seriously.

The date of September 4 was mentioned as a finish date, but it was ultimately left up in the air when the actual projected finish date will be.