Dist. 1, Gadsden welcome back their students
Students in two more Yuma County school districts returned for their first day of classes Monday, with the superintendents of both reporting relatively smooth sailing, despite some challenges faced in one.
Yuma Elementary School District No. 1 had about 8,200 students come back to its 19 campuses, Superintendent Jamie Sheldahl said, and all were being kept indoors as much as possible due to temperatures reaching 107 degrees by early afternoon.
The middle-school campuses were subjected to a little disorganization, he said, due to a new student information system that produced some glitches.
“We did have some kids at the beginning of the day that either had a hole in their schedule or had a class they didn’t sign up for or a class that wasn’t the right class,” he said, but the errors were quickly corrected. Elementary school students weren’t affected,
since they stay with the same teacher throughout the day, he added.
The cafeteria at Woodard Junior High School was closed until further notice after acoustic tiles began falling off the ceiling last week, but the campus has another large multipurpose room that is being used to serve breakfast and lunch, Sheldahl said.
Raymond Aguilera, superintendent of the Gadsden School District, said the eight campuses in that district came out unscathed as well, as they brought 5,200 students back to the fold.
Front offices will be busy for the next two weeks as parents seek transfers or other changes for their children, but that will inevitably calm down, he said.
He said the full-day kindergarten classes Gadsden is offering for the first time in several years are proving to be almost too popular to keep up with.
“We’ve had to establish new classrooms because we have more kindergarteners coming in. And we thought we had a handle on it as of last week. But they keep rolling in, which is good,” he said.
Both superintendents said their schools have a handful of teacher positions that are filled by longterm substitutes or other instructors who haven’t gotten fully certified, but the problem is improving for District One, Sheldahl said.
There are six such positions in District One this time, as opposed to nearly 20 in previous years, he said. “This year we actually are in better shape as far as a fully certificated teacher in each classroom than we’ve been in some time.”
Aguilera said the Gadsden District does have some emergency positions. “If we come across a fully certified teacher, they’ll be replaced. But for the most part, everyone has got some kind of certification.”