Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
SAN JON — The San Jon Municipal Schools board of trustees on Oct. 12 unanimously approved a micro-district re-entry plan that allows the district to begin offering in-person classes to all students this week.
The board also gave superintendent Janet Gladu a contract extension that will keep her in the district through June 2022.
Regarding the micro-district, Gladu told the board the New Mexico Public Education Department accepted the plan that afternoon after rejecting a previous plan. Because San Jon has fewer than 100 students, it is not subject to state COVID-19 requirements that in-person classes be limited to 50% of its roster. The district instead will hold classes in 5-to-1 student-to-teacher ratios or as close to possible.
Gladu said one middle-school class will be on rotation of one week of in-person instruction and one week of remote learning. One larger middle-school class will have one week of in-person classes and two weeks of remote learning. She said everyone in the high school would be brought back if they wanted in-person classes.
Gladu said she decided to wait until the following week to expand in-person classes at San Jon in case Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced more restrictions amid a statewide rise in coronavirus cases.
“If the governor takes us backwards, it would be more emotionally devastating if we’d brought them back to school for a few days,” she said. “Our staff is struggling; our kids are struggling. They want to be back in school.”
The governor announced no restrictions on school districts during her weekly briefing Thursday.
At the start of the meeting, board members were taken to the classrooms of second-grade teacher Ralene Thrasher and middle-school teacher Tana Lopez. Both said their students were struggling in remote-learning environments, despite the district using new, high-tech Promethean boards to help in that effort.
“It’s a daily struggle,” Lopez said. “It’s not from lack of effort by the kids.”
Lopez added her students desperately want to return to class, and she said the governor's recent decision to delay fall sports until at least early 2021 was an emotional blow to many of them.
“Sports is a motivator for many of them,” she said. “It was rough. It’s hard to look forward to nothing.”
Thrasher said her students showed a decline in their first assessment tests but improved during the second assessment.
Thrasher explained how she organized her classroom as a COVID-safe environment with assigned desks more than 6 feet apart, plastic dividers between them and milk crates beside each desk containing school materials. Thrasher also set up two lines to a hand-washing station for the pupils.
Regarding Gladu’s contract, she will receive $111,300 a year with two more days of vacation time, to 17 days. The board met behind closed doors for 30 minutes to discuss the pact before approving it. Gladu said the board agreed to an extension in January but delayed salary discussions when the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Gladu was hired as the district’s superintendent in mid-2018 after leading a school district in western Illinois. Gladu was born in El Paso, Texas, and raised in Utah.
In her superintendent’s report, Gladu said the annual school carnival remains on hold and probably won’t be scheduled until the spring. The annual production by the Missoula Children’s Theatre remains on hold, also due to COVID-19 restrictions. She said she was hoping to have the play in the spring as well, as it is popular with several of the district’s children.
Gladu said those will be difficult to schedule with virtually all events, including sports, moved to the spring semester.
“Something will have to give because not everything’s going to fit,” she said.
The board tabled action on first reading of a policy advisory regarding students’ eligibility for extracurricular activities. The policy’s wording — including an apparent misspelling of a word — confused board members and school officials. They decided to delay action until they received clarification. Approval of the policy is not due until January.