During a special work session of the Yellow Springs school board, conducted online Saturday morning, March 6, the district superintendent said she is working on a plan to increase students’ in-person classroom time to near pre-pandemic levels.
The local schools, which began the academic year with 100% online instruction, went to a “hybrid” model combining online and in-person classes effective March 1, with elementary school students in their building two half days a week, and middle and high school students attending in-person classes two full days a week.
Now, the superintendent is talking about bringing everyone into their buildings for at least four full days a week beginning in April.
Calendar year 2020 began and ended with Yellow Springs school district leaders discussing identified structural needs in the local school buildings and how to address them, but the majority of the year was occupied by the district’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Learning amid COVID
Gov. Mike DeWine was at the forefront in national responses to the novel coronavirus pandemic when in March he temporarily shuttered businesses and activities in Ohio, including all K–12 schools, to help curtail spread of the disease.
DeWine announced the school closures Thursday, March 12, effective at the end of the school day Monday, March 16, and initially set the return date for Monday, April 6. In Yellow Springs, one of those three weeks was already designated as the district’s annual spring break, and so teachers and administrators used the four days between the governor’s announcement and the shutdown to prepare two weeks worth of remote-learning and study materials. Teachers set up
Among all the mail ferried by the U.S. Postal Service every year, there’s one name and address that arguably receives more correspondence than any other in the country: Santa Claus, North Pole. Considering Santa’s busy schedule, however, it’s no surprise that the famed Christmas patron needs some help answering fan mail.
For the past three decades, local Santa-designated aides have been providing that assistance, making sure that Santa not only receives the letters, but dutifully taking dictation after a fashion to make sure every letter writer receives a response. For years, the letters have been filed away presumably for naughty-or-nice record-keeping. Now the letters have found a new home at the YS Library, where past letter writers or their grown-ups are invited to take home their holiday missives.