Update for Thursday, March 19, 2020 @ 3:30 pm
Everything Resumes Where We Left Off
Yesterday’s earthquake certainly made an impact on Wednesday’s Digital Home Learning programming. All at-home learning activities and our school lunch program had to be canceled for the day to assess damages and protect the safety of our personnel.
However, today we got back on track and for now, will continue our plan for Digital Home Learning. It was mentioned in an earlier update that March 27 is the final day of the term and that hasn’t changed. So please encourage and work with your students to stay on-task with their learning and communicating with teachers to ensure you are on the same page
School lunch also resumed today at each of the 10 schools, plus the Fireclay and Frontgate drop sites. That will continue from 11:30 am to 12:30 pm each day.
Parenthetically, yesterday was also a valuable reminder to prepare for earthquakes and we encourage everyone to visit shakeout.org – Utah’s official earthquake preparedness website – to pick up some useful tips.
District Office is Open for Chromebook Distribution
For students who have not received their Chromebook, parents may visit the District Office between 8:00 am and 3:00 pm each day. We are practicing social distancing in this endeavor by only allowing five visitors at a time into the District Office. If we get particularly busy we may invite you to wait outside so please be patient.
Keeping the District Team Together
In that MCSD is following social distancing advisories, some of you may be wondering how we are handling this on our end. Prior to our official school dismissal on March 12, most of our staff relied heavily on close day-to-day interaction with each other, students, and parents.
But, as with our students, district and school staff are conducting most communication electronically using platforms such as Google Drive (Docs, Sheets, and Slides) and Zoom video conferencing. But we are also in close contact over traditional email and phone, texting and group texting. Thankfully, modern digital communication tools are collaborative, simple, and effective.
Beyond using technology to conduct daily operations, most of our support staff are fully engaged in serving students in different ways. Some are tackling maintenance projects that are invaluable to the District’s facility and transportation assets. And, most are also participating in additional training to sharpen and enhance their capacity to serve students.
Our social worker team continues to provide one-to-one support electronically but are also compiling resources for parents and students to help them manage stress. As another example, School crossing guards are still working at their locations during the daily lunch period, protecting students and parents from dangerous traffic situations as they pick up their grab-and-go lunches.
We are learning as we go, but we are also finding there are ample opportunities for district personnel to help families navigate this very unique time in history.
