Superintendent's Message for September 2020

The 2020-2021 school year is off to a great start.  As the United States continues to be in chaos and every week something different happens in our great country, we are sheltered here in the heartland.  Our children were able to start school as scheduled and parents could choose between online learning or sending their children to learn in our school buildings.  We have made needed adjustments to our daily schedules and protocols, but have tried to give our children normalcy in a time where nothing is customary in the world. 

The year 2020 is like standing in the batter’s box in a major league baseball game.  The pitcher is throwing all kinds of pitches.  You can swing widely, or you can be patient and make contact on your pitch.  Coronavirus was the first pitch and I do not know of anyone that hit that curveball.  SWV did not step out of the box; we went to work on how we would feed our kids and educate them while the students could not attend school.

We began to educate our students the best we knew how to in a remote learning environment.  Decisions were always made with the student’s best interests and safety in mind.  We decided to have graduation on our scheduled date with some modifications, including limiting attendance to parents and graduates with facemasks and social distancing required.  We had an outdoor graduation ceremony reported on by statewide television.  Things changed daily on guidance throughout the summer.  We were still able to have baseball and softball seasons without any cases of Covid-19 from either team.

We have stood firm on our desire not to mandate facemasks and instead highly recommend them.  We are cleaning buildings more often throughout the day and deep cleaning the buildings after school.  We know that it is probably just a matter of time until our district has a case, but we have plans and protocols in place to inform the public in a timely fashion.

Homecoming is quickly approaching and Southwest Valley is very excited to share with the public the events for the week of September 7-11th.  After a discussion with our High School Principal and Activities Director, we have decided to scale back some of the activities to ensure everyone’s safety.  First, we are moving all activities outside.  We will have the cakewalk, pep rally, and coronation at the football stadium on Thursday night.  We will have the parade at 2:00 p.m. on Friday and the game will be at 7 p.m. vs. AHSTW.  The theme for this year’s Homecoming is United We are One.

 Come out and support all of our activities this year. We face challenging circumstances this year, and as I have told our staff, this will be their best year ever!