COVID-19 has impacted the students and staff of the lives this school year. This school year will be one for the books. COVID-19 has completely turned everyone’s lives upside down, especially the students and staff members at the high school. The school has provided plenty of new ways to prevent COVID-19. 

A completely new schedule has been put in place, this is because of the need to have a low capacity classroom. The new schedule consists of an A and B day schedule, both only have three periods a day. Each period last between 84-100 minutes. Lunch time has been moved to the end of the day and now is optional, after lunch the school buses arrive to pick up any students that chose to take the bus. There have also been sanitizing locations spread throughout the schools, and new one way hallways in order to prevent the virus. 

  “Our efforts to mitigate the virus include physical distancing in classrooms with desks 6 feet apart, extensive scheduling work around classroom capacity, and safety measures including hand-washing breaks, hand-sanitizing stations in the building, one-way directional hallways, and rules around wearing a mask while in the building,” Principal Rob Bach said.

If a student or staff member that attends school has any COVID-19 symptoms: Like the following: A fever of 100.0 degrees or higher, a new and/or worsening cough, difficulty breathing, and/or loss of taste or smell. The student/staff member must go into quarantine for 10 days. Also, they must be interviewed in order to all the people who were in contact with the virus and those students will also be put into quarantine for 10 days. 

According to Bach depending on how bad the outbreak is the school or district could dial back completely.

 This year’s clubs and activities have been changed completely. A lot of clubs and sports have been canceled or moved to a different season! Some have simply just made modifications with how they are meeting and their events. 

“Because I’m online some clubs I am in are also looking different. This year, I’m co-president of ASU and we’ll be having meetings online instead of in person. Events we had planned will, unfortunately, be out on pause or not happen this year,” junior Mackenzie Vang said.

Online students still get the same amount of work as the hybrid students. The students are all still expected to be doing their school work even if the student is an online only student or hybrid student. 

Vang said “There are some days where the workload that I have for classes is a little bit too much, but I’m able to finish it in time” referring to how the students still are expected to be doing their work.

For both online and hybrid, there is organized and consistent posting of assignments and messages for both students and parents.  Students are offered Virtual, face-to-face engagement, and independent learning time. Office hours are also a new way to meet with your teachers this year, it’s a smaller ratio the in-class Zoom calls. 

“Communication with the teachers is like essential now…If you don’t know how to do something or somehow something isn’t working you have to email your teachers instead of just asking someone next to you,” sophomore, Kyle Young said.

 Online is a part of the education even if the student is doing Hybrid, this so we can make sure everyone is safe! Hybrid day A students go in on Mondays and Wednesdays. Hybrid day B students go in on Tuesday and Thursdays. On Fridays is cleaning day at the school, all students are online. 

“…for online it’s bittersweet. I like being able to finish early and work at my own pace but I also miss actually leaving the house and such,” freshman, Jacob Mueller.