Scotts Valley set to welcome back students
Scotts Valley Unified continues to lead the charge to normalcy as it expects to return all grade levels to campus.
Scotts Valley Unified continues to lead the charge to normalcy as it expects to be the first school district in Santa Cruz County to return all grade levels to campus.
The district was the first in the county to welcome back transitional kindergarten and kindergarten students. Now, it is continuing that trend.
“We are very proud of the progress that we have been able to make collectively as a district,” SVUSD Superintendent Tanya Krause said. “By next week, we will have all grades back in full hybrid schedules for those who want that.”
The county dropped to the red “substantial” tier on March 10. That transition allowed middle and high schools to begin a phased return to campus, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Safe Schools for All plan.
Sixth graders filled the halls of Scotts Valley Middle School on Monday and seniors at Scotts Valley High school will do the same Tuesday, according to Krause. The district chose to return seniors before the underclassmen in order for them to act as role models to their younger classmates.
“The seniors are going to kind of be onboarded in understanding the protocols,” Krause said. “We’re going to ask them to be ambassadors for helping out the lower classmen.”
The rest of the SVUSD students will return to campus the following week. Seventh and eighth graders will make their return on March 29. Ninth, 10th and 11th graders will round off the return on March 30.
Other districts in the county have elected to wait until after Spring Break to bring secondary school students back to campus. Those students will begin making their way back to campus throughout April, depending on which district they attend.”]
“Every district has unique challenges and different reasons why they start their schedules in the way they do,” Krause said. “I am very pleased that we will be able to bring everybody back right before we go out on Spring Break.”
SVUSD will use the week before Spring Break as a trial run. During that week, the district will see what worked well with the hybrid schedule and what needs improvement. Then, Spring Break will be used to come up with ideas to fix the issues.
However, that isn’t the only factor in consideration. The Cen
ter for Disease Control and Prevention reduced the distance required for social distancing in schools from 6 feet to 3 feet on Friday. Now, the district must decide if that is a protocol that it can, or should, implement.
Once students come back from Spring Break, the district plans to survey parents about the proposed improvements and work with the district’s teacher unions. The survey is also meant to gauge the comfortability of parents of reducing distancing protocols.
That being said, it isn’t just a matter of comfortability from parents, staff and students. There is uncertainty if the district can make those changes logistically and still support the number of students that wish to be in classrooms.
Social distancing protocols have forced elementary classrooms to be restructured. What is normally groups of children around a
table is now students at individual desks. That has created a desk shortage among the elementary schools. The district isn’t sure if it has the furniture to support more students in each classroom.
Conversely, there is are space issues at the secondary level. While the district isn’t concerned about supplying desks to its students, it is concerned about fitting students into its classrooms while maintaining physical distancing protocols. It is still in the process of measuring the classrooms to see how many students it can accommodate under current guidelines.
“Let’s say there were 36 kids in a class at normal times and 80% of those kids want to return to in-person instruction, we could not fit 29 desks even with 3 feet apart,” Krause said. “We would have too many kids that want to return.”
While these are challenges the district is facing, it is keeping its focus on the task at hand. That is getting students back in classrooms.
“We want that to go well, so that is really truly where
our focus is, right now,” Krause said. “We are doing everything within our resource ability to implement our hybrid plan and also focus on how we may be able to make improvement and hope that people will be cooperative as we address this latest change.”