YUHSD reports smooth first day
Yuma Union High School District welcomed back students for the 2019-2020 school year Thursday, with six high schools across the county reporting a relatively trouble-free first day of classes and enrollment in the district up by more than 400 students.
YUHSD Communications Director Eric Patten said that after speaking to administrators from across the district Thurs
day, “they all said it was a really smooth day, you know, you have a little bit of first day hiccups like a bell ringing at the wrong time or something like that, but for the most part — one person said it was ‘eerily smooth.’”
“Teachers were doing what they need to do, they were happy and ready for the kids,” said Kofa High School Principal Michael Sharp. “The schedule hand-out went smooth. Lunches (went) as smooth as they can be on the first day.”
San Luis High School made a couple of changes before the start of the school year, as well, like moving the start and end time of the school day to 7:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. respectively and squeezing lunch time for the whole school into a one-hour window instead of one-and-a-half hours.
“We’re starting at 7:30 instead of 7:20, so it always helps to have 10 minutes… and yes, we went to two lunches and two lunches work great,” said San Luis High School Principal Lucky Arvizo. “You know, students were going from class to class and getting in on time and the (new) schedule worked really well today.”
San Luis High School was able to fit more students into a onehour lunch time due to more tables and outdoor patio coverings. Patten said that in each of the two lunch periods within the hourlong lunch time, the school was able to serve 1,300 students.
Kofa High School is also looking a bit different since this time last year, with new facilities including an improved auxiliary gym, weight room, science research building and culinary arts lab, among others.
“It’s super nice just to open up with the new construction, you know, that the voters paid for,” said Sharp. “So it’s super nice to watch the teachers in their new rooms and the kids walking in and looking at their new facilities.
“It’s like there’s… a big sense of pride now, not that there wasn’t before, but it’s, like, we’ve got some new awesome facilities, and this is cool.”
Sharp said that the mood among students was that they’re “ready to be back,” and that some freshman coming from smaller middle school campuses were surprised by the size of Kofa High School.
“So there were a few confused, kind of worried, lost faces around, (but) we had security and staff out there helping them out,” he said.
Students who want to shift around their elective classes can also see their counselors to change their schedules within the first couple of weeks.
According to Patten, though freshman schedules are locked in, the “unofficial” cutoff for changes is 10 days. He recommends that they be done in the first full week, however.
“The first two days are going to be pretty hectic, because you’re going to have some students who didn’t register, you’re going to have all that stuff,” he said. “So those first two days Thursday and Friday are going to be kind of logistically tough to get some of those schedule changes if it’s an elective or that kind of thing.”