‘Ready and on point’
Yuma Union, Yuma Catholic students return
Yuma Union and Yuma Catholic high school students returned to classes Thursday under muggy humidity and warm temperatures.
“It was great. It was packed,” Yuma Catholic Principal Rhett Stallworth said of the first day. The school was adding additional classrooms and teachers to handle the influx, he said.
“With the numbers being up there… we’ve got a couple of traveling teachers and a couple of buildings in the works that are almost completed and then we’ll have a home for everyone,” Stallworth said.
Attendance at the school was probably going to be about 400 students, Stallworth said, “give or take,” noting the number of students fluctuates during the first few weeks before settling down.
One of the new programs Yuma Catholic welcomes this year is business agriculture, headed by longtime agricultural instructor Patricia Rush.
Just a few blocks away from Yuma Catholic, students were streaming into Kofa High School, where medical assisting and pharmacy support services were added to the career and technical education curriculum at a summer YUHSD governing board meeting.
Kofa Sophomore Kayla Duran said her first day was a bit mixed.
“My first day of school was fun, but I was also nervous,” she said in an email to the Yuma Sun. “I got to meet all of my teachers and meet new people. I’m glad I was able to see all of my friends from last year.”
Duran said she’s hoping to have a good year and “achieve straight A’s, make more friends as time goes on, and be successful in my role as historian for French Club.”
Bond projects over the summer at YUHSD campuses included many updates, renovation of classroom buildings, new bleachers at Yuma High, and many more. Ground was broken for new administrative offices and a new Vista High School. The footings for those buildings were poured last week, said facilities manager Jay Munoz, at Friday’s grand-opening for Cibola’s classroom building.
New CTE programs were also added including: digital photography, intro to media technology and nursing classes at Gila Ridge (complete with new nursing lab); extreme sports (automotive) and sports medicine at Yuma High; education professions at Cibola; digital communications, building maintenance and cooperative education at San Luis; and business management at Vista.
Yuma High announced it was dropping its uniform policy Thursday afternoon, prompting a backlash from parents on social media sites.
The school surveyed more than 1,000 parents during registration week, with 61.5 percent saying they would prefer a “non-uniform policy,” according to a news release from YUHSD that was sent out after parents were informed of the news.
Students must still adhere to the dress code listed in the Yuma Union High School District student handbook, the release said, and the new policy will go into effect immediately.
Yuma High also welcomed new administrative staff, including Principal Robert Chouinard. Formerly, Chouinard was an assistant principal at Cibola and prior to that headed the guidance office at Kofa. Steve Anderson and Guadelia Castro, Yuma High’s new assistant principals, have served the same role elsewhere in the district. Anderson will be the athletic director (having been the same at Gila Ridge), while Castro will share assistant principal duties and oversee academics. She was an assistant principal at Kofa last year.
“It’s beyond exciting,” Chouinard said. “I’m looking so forward to working with the staff and embracing and supporting every student. It’s all about relationships, and I want every student to feel that we want them here.”
Gila Ridge also welcomed its first home-grown school resource officer (SRO), Evan Stokes, an alumnus who will also be a CTE instructor.
“Today was a great example of all that our school staff, faculty and administration does to go above and beyond for our students. In a lot of ways, it is like they are hosting a major event for a few thousand people but doing it 180 days a year,” said YUHSD Assistant Superintendent Gina Thompson, who was a longtime principal at Kofa before moving up to the district office. “It is really incredible when you think about it. They have to be ready and on point from the first day of school until graduation. And, to me, we couldn’t ask for better hosts on our six campuses.” For most students, the first few days of school will be about figuring out what’s what, Stallworth said.
“The first week or so, there is a lot of getting everybody used to routines so you spend a lot of your time on the walk, doing traffic, crosswalk duty, cafeteria stuff, just in the hallways making sure everybody understands how to go, what to do and how to act,” said YC’s second-year principal. “Those type of things.”
“We’re good, though” Stallworth continued. “We’ve got it down …we’ve just got to especially train the parents of new freshmen coming in.”