LIST: Arizona school districts with mask requirements fox10phoenix.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from fox10phoenix.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Melissa Sadorf
First-grade teacher Shiela Garland had long known that 100% of students in Arizona’s Stanfield Elementary School District, where she has taught for 16 years, ate free meals.
But Garland didn’t fully get what those numbers meant until last spring, when the coronavirus pandemic hit and schools closed across the United States. Suddenly, she and other Stanfield staff members found themselves in masks and gloves, riding up to 150 miles a day on school buses traversing gravel and dirt roads to hand out food and homework packets to children.
Before the pandemic, Garland usually saw her students only in the classroom. Some of the students’ homes she visited lacked electricity, indoor plumbing or windows.
The statewide plunge in K-12 district school enrollment has swamped Gov. Doug Duceyâs promise to limit the damage to school budgets.
As a result, the Payson school board on Tuesday approved a major budget shuffle to cover a loss of some $540,000. The districtâs 2,300 enrollment has dropped by a catastrophic 15% â roughly 345 students.
In addition, about 15% of the districtâs students have continued in distance learning classes, rather than returning to in-person classes.
Fortunately, the district hadnât counted on the state keeping its promise to cut enrollment-based funding by no more than 2%, no matter how many worried parents kept their kids out of school during the pandemic.