Updates from USD 320 Wamego superintendent Tim Winter
School is back in session for USD 320 Wamego students.
Tim Winter, USD 320 Wamego superintendent, says one of the biggest coronavirus-related challenges they have faced is the process of getting students and staff inside school buildings in the morning.
“Our staff have to be temp-checked and screened and then we follow up with trying to get 375 to 475, approximately, into four different school buildings in a short amount of time,” Winter said. “Our schools are all within the city limits of Wamego and our streets and neighborhoods get fairly congested between 7:30 and 8 a.m..”
He says they have also had to deal with classes made up of both in-person and remote students.
“Being able to address the students’ needs on-site and pay attention to what a student is doing remotely is a challenge,” Winter said. “That’s what we’re primarily doing at the secondary level, is nesting those students within the on-site classroom, so they can hear first-hand exactly what’s going on.”
Most Wamego students started school on Sept. 3 with the exception of pre-K and Kindergarten, which began on Sept. 8.
Updates from USD 323 superintendent Kevin Logan
USD 323 Rock Creek classes have been in session since August 20 and Kevin Logan, USD 323 Rock Creek superintendent, says that things have gone well aside from a few quarantines.
“What we do with our staff, if they are asymptomatic, (is) we are asking them to teach from home and we actually remote them into the classroom,” Logan said. “If it is our students and they are asymptomatic or feeling like they can participate, we nest them into the classes that they come out of versus going into a currently remotely set-up environment.”
According to Logan, teaching a class made up of in-person and remote students can be challenging due to technology issues and miscommunications.
Of the overall Rock Creek student population, about 93 percent have opted to take in-person classes.
“The other seven percent are learning remotely from home and we have several different environments for that to happen between the high school, the middle school and the elementary schools,” Logan said. “Some of those students are in a specific class for remote students. Others are being nested into the regular classrooms.”
Rock Creek students had to work for one to three hours per day in the spring depending on their grade level.
Logan says all Rock Creek students now must work 390 minutes per day to meet the 1116-hour requirement for the school year.
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