GISD makes district plans during statewide closure
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Woodland Elementary School hands out meals as a part of the district’s newly launched curbside breakfast and lunch program. The program was launched on Monday to provide students with a meal while shut down due to COVID-19. According to GISD Superintendent Sonny Cruse, the district served around 150 students on the first day. (Leader photo by Mike Williams)
The Graham ISD board of trustees met in an emergency meeting Friday, March 20 to address the COVID-19 pandemic and the steps the district will be taking. GISD Superintendent Sonny Cruse additionally updated the public with a Facebook livestream Monday, March 23, and touched on issues the district will be tackling regarding COVID-19.
Cruse said Monday the district is working to keep the community updated on all changes made and will be utilizing the GISD website and parent outreach program ParentSquare to keep them informed. The district worked on resource distribution for students and created a technology survey which was sent to parents and had over 800 responses with close to 300 responses within the first 30 minutes of being available.
“Moving forward we will plan for instruction in two ways,” Cruse said March 20. “We will plan to do thing digitally and that can be everything from Google Classroom to (…) other programs that we use. It can also possibly include these Google Hangouts with teachers and their students and that kind of thing. But, if it can’t be done digitally, we will provide people an opportunity to do an analogue or paper products. We will make that happen.”
Cruse said last Friday the technology team for the district was evaluating the inventory of devices they possess and were working to expand their Wi-Fi access points in the district by making it available in close proximity to the campuses and through the voluntary efforts of a internet provider in the community.
“Brazos Communications has really stepped up and they put in three wireless access points in our community for our kiddos and one of them is going to be on the square, one of them will be right now I think at Crestview (Elementary School) and the other will be at Woodland (Elementary School),” Cruse said. “They have stepped up and they are going to put that with their fiber at no cost to the district.”
The district sent a notice Wednesday to parents about remote leaning material pick up procedures, which were distributed on Friday from 2 to 6 p.m. Each campus had its own procedures for pickup of the materials and instructions for each grade level.
For the full story, see the Saturday, March 28 edition of The Graham Leader.
