Summer may be at its peak, but for students it’s quickly beginning to wind down.
The new year begins for them on August 28, and several new things are in store. At Evergreen Elementary School, Gail Taylor will be settling in as its new principal. Offered the job in June and starting later this month, she was previously the elementary principal at Haworth School District in Haworth, Oklahoma.
For students at Stikine Middle and Wrangell High schools, secondary principal Bill Schwan explained a new guidance counselor will be starting soon. The role will be rearranged to allow both academic and career guidance, with the latter getting greater emphasis in the coming year.
“My big push is going to be career development. Getting kids access to knowing what careers there are, and what they’re going to need to get there,” said Schwan. He would like to see them begin thinking about the future as early as 8th grade, as well as what their different education options might be.
“We’ll talk about what careers don’t need a college education, what needs a trade school or a four-year degree,” he continued. “When they get into high school they’ll have a four-year plan, which they started last year.
“Our end goal is to have a huge career fair here,” he concluded. Schwan is currently seeking out interested businesses and professionals to set up booths and promote a smorgasbord of career options.
Quite a bit else will be new for Wrangell’s 6th through 12th grade classes. For starters, student athletes can begin coming to school early for an extra bit of lift and a physical education credit.
“We’ve got a new facility in the school for our zero-hour weight training class,” said Schwan, a program added by popular demand. Regular access to weights will be a boon for students, he explained, as not all of them have regular access to the Wrangell Rec Center’s set next door. “The kids are pretty jacked about that.”
The school’s swimming class will be headed into its second year. Two teachers have been life-guard training certified since the program began last year, an investment Schwan hopes will begin to pay off this year. “The goal is to have kids come out of there to help serve the needs of the rec center, with life guards and stuff like that.”
Odile Meister’s Spanish language program will also be entering its second year in 2017-18, which means a second-level course has been added for last year’s students. Meanwhile, finding a replacement for recently retired mathematics teacher Patty Gilbert is in its final stages.
Classes themselves will be a little longer across all programs this year as well, due to rescheduling. “We do have a new lunch setup this year, so instead of two periods we’re going to have one,” Schwan explained. The new block this year will be a little leaner, from 11:50 a.m. to 12:25 p.m.
After experimenting last year with a limited closed campus – where students are not free to come and go as they please – this year will resume the open campus policy of prior years, though middle school students will need to obtain written permission from their parents or guardians first.
On the other hand, Schwan said there would be ways to incentivize staying on campus during lunch this year, by bringing town to the campus itself.
“We’re actually rolling out what I’m calling our ‘community lunch program,’ where we have businesses in town that will be catering to the school,” he explained. So far he has enlisted Bobs’ IGA, City Market, Notsofamous Pizza and J&W’s to participate.
“We have four days of vendors, and that menu will change monthly,” said Schwan. “They have researched and done what they need to charge the school. It’s not going to be excessive,” with costs capped at $5 per meal.
Buying lunches will a more technological process: “We’re going to do digital thumb readers.” Students will be able to pick up their meals with the press of their finger, ostensibly speeding up service. “There’s no cash exchange, that’s all going to be on their activity account. So parents are really going to have to make sure they have money in their account, for when their kids eat.” For those contingencies, the cafeteria will have sandwiches and the like on hand.
The school is currently working on a how-to video for students, and will be reaching out to parents about the new program. Eventually Schwan expects to see ordering more personalized as well, with students using phone apps to place theirs in advance. This will help streamline preparation and billing, the principal explained.
The schools are also working with Alaska Island Community Services to adopt and distribute an anti-bullying and incident report app called Anonymous Alerts. Grant-permitting, Schwan said the phone-based application would allow students to file incident reports with the school anonymously.
Students and staff can also use the app to alert the rest of the school to potentially dangerous intrusions on campus. The feature would help the school better address security needs, said Schwan. Anonymous Alerts would be a phone first for Wrangell High School if it were adopted.
Registration for the district’s students is also moving online, with 2017-18 electronic forms available on the http://www.wpsd.us website.
“We’re going to roll out a new online registration process, so everything that we did with reams and reams of paper will be done digitally,” said Schwan.
Parents can still sign their students in the old fashioned way, with a K-12 registration day scheduled for the afternoon and evening of August 15, at the high school commons area.
“We’ll have stations set up, I’m hoping for six to eight stations so we can get through everybody quickly,” the secondary principal said.
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