By DOUG BATES/Editor/The Herald — So much will be new when nearly 550 Oakridge children return to school Tuesday: new teachers, new principals, new programs and new facilities, not to mention the new crayons and shoes that every kid hopes to have on the first day of school.
But what’s really new this fall is what’s new everywhere: Kids are going back to classrooms — not in special quarantined “cohorts” like we saw at the height of the pandemic but in the much more traditional in-person format that has been greatly reduced for the past year and a half because of COVID-19.
A transition, of course, will be required, says Oakridge Supt. Reta Doland.
“Our theme this year is that we’re rebounding,” she says. “There will need to be a transition in which we devote ourselves to the social and emotional support of our kids” as they return to a semblance of normal school life.
Expect a few wrinkles, courtesy of the coronavirus. Face masks will be required by the Oregon Health Authority, along with physical distancing, sanitizing and screening at entry. Under state rules, all school staff members, volunteers and adults visiting the school grounds will need proof they’ve been vaccinated.
Doland said she expects district enrollment to be about the same as last year — and perhaps a little higher. Kids will be greeted by several new teachers and two new principals: Tracy Ross at the high school, replacing Greg Chapman, and Tina Maher at the elementary school, serving a year as interim principal while Peter Iten is on leave.
Students returning to the high school and junior high campus should be prepared to see some impressive changes in the facilities. The biggest involves seismic-related renovations that have transformed the old locker rooms into a gleaming, spacious multipurpose room and community shelter with much-increased generator capacity.
Funding for the upgrades, which are substantially complete, came from a $600,000 federal rural development grant, a $2.5 million Oregon Seismic Rehabilitation Program grant and partial funding from the $5.2 million construction bond approved by Oakridge-Westfir voters in 2017.
The gymnasium and auditorium received large-scale makeovers in the seismic upgrades, and students will notice many other facility enhancements such as a thorough remodel of the science lab and completion of a student health clinic with three examination rooms.
Doland also expressed enthusiasm for a new online instructional program called Oakridge Academy K-12. The optional program, in which 32 students in grades K through 12 are enrolled in some level of virtual home-schooling, is something Doland says she wanted to introduce in the community well before the pandemic arrived. The goal, she says, is to give families the option of having their children learn in “a more supportive environment” than they find in the formal classroom.
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