The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Goal to offer in-person learning second semester
[ By Kendra Walker ]
Despite most of Colorado’s school districts having shifted to virtual learning as COVID-19 cases rise, Gunnison Watershed School District’s COVID-19 safety protocols have allowed our community’s students to continue in-person learning. It’s the district’s thoughtful leadership in handling safe education during the pandemic that has served as a model across the state, so much so that district superintendent Leslie Nichols has been asked to serve on a “back-to-school task force” established by Governor Jared Polis to help Colorado districts offer in-person learning as much as possible during the second semester at the beginning of 2021.
Polis created the task force in an effort to provide more hands-on support for school districts. The group includes public health officials, school board members, educators and parents to work together to look at protocols and examples of what has worked so far.
“We want to find recommendations to help more kids in the state be more in person, and do that safely and sustainably,” said Nichols.
Polis has left the decision to remain open up to each individual school district, but he has expressed the desire to see schools open for in-person learning. “The classroom is one of the safest places,” he said during a press conference announcing the task force in late November. “We want to do all we can in that controlled environment to not have an additional semester as chaotic as this one.”
The task force has been meeting virtually and the goal is to gather recommendations to the governor by early next week. “We will continue to meet into January to work on other pieces of the puzzle to get kids back to school,” said Nichols. The task force is broken into three subcommittees; Nichols is co-chairing one with Eagle County Public Health director Heath Harmon. “We are looking at classroom conditions, student configurations and quarantine guidance,” said Nichols.
“It’s been an interesting process to have these conversations and wrap my head around how other districts are struggling,” said Nichols. “It’s really shined a light on what’s working well for us,” she said, attributing success to students, parents and staff taking the district’s risk reduction toolkit seriously, and commitment to contact tracing and the leadership from Gunnison County Public Health director Joni Reynolds. “It’s not rocket science what we’re doing—it’s commitment,” said Nichols.
Students in Gunnison and Crested Butte still have the option for online learning with the district’s Pathways program. Approximately 200 students are enrolled in Pathways and Nichols said that over the course of the semester, between 10 and 20 kids have returned to in-person learning. Looking into next semester, the number of kids moving from online learning to in-person and vice versa is about dead even, with about 35 to 40 kids moving in either direction.
Earlier this year, Governor Polis extended kudos to the Gunnison Watershed School District for its Return to School Handbook. The thorough health protocols and sanitization efforts outlined in the risk reduction toolkit are being followed and have kept RE1J open since August, said Nichols. As of Tuesday, December 8, the district has seen a total of 25 positive COVID-19 cases, 268 negative and 15 pending tests since the first day of school.
“I’m honored to have been selected to the task force to do this work but it’s not about me, it’s because of our teachers, students, parents, and our community and how we are all committed to keeping this good thing going,” said Nichols. “We’re all engaged. Teachers are working as counselors and custodians and nurses, plus they’re teaching and kids are learning.
She concluded, “I am so happy that the kids in this valley are not going to be part of what is being called the ‘lost generation’ due to the pandemic. The remote learning that we did pull together in the spring far exceeded what happened around the state. We are making potentially a lifetime of impact on our students in not losing out on academics and in-person socializing and development in school. It’s a value difficult to even put words on.”
