Medical Lake 21-22 school calendar approved

MEDICAL LAKE — The easy part seems to have been accomplished when the Medical Lake School Board approved its 2021-22 school calendar at its Feb. 23 monthly meeting.

Projected to start on Wed., Sept. 1 and finish June 15, the school year will do its best to launch amidst hopefully diminished COVID-19 restrictions, but confident because of measures taken in the 2020-21 term

There were, as always, a number of options presented to the calendar committee, and one consideration was because Labor Day is late this year — Sept. 6 — would be to begin in August, Superintendent Tim Ames explained.

But the approved start date offered a three-day week with which to get things rolling and then progress, hopefully, into regular five-day schedules.

The proposed calendar, which includes four emergency make-up days, was submitted to staff asking for input, Ames said. “We got three responses, and they’re all positive,” he said.

Medical Lake is planning for as much a return to normal as possible, perhaps rolling the dice, but being ready, regardless.

One of the bigger challenges rests with the moving target of funds. Money is at the heart of things everywhere, and Medical Lake is not exception having lost a little over 100 FTE — fulltime equivalent students.

With a $1.9 billion stimulus package awaiting its fate in Congress, Ames outlined a meeting held with the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) where he learned that schools stand to land dollars. The money will help backfill budgets that have been hampered by COVID.

“This is going to be a lot of money each state that the state will get 2% of the 1.9,” Ames said. “They’re (OSPI) kind of holding back with that money to see, instead of using state funds, how can we use federal funds to make this whole as they move through this next two to three year period.”

Ames hopes those decisions are made quickly because his district is planning now. Waiting to summer changes a lot of things for a number of districts he said. Ames insists that “We’re in a good spot,” but other districts are not for fortunate and may have to resort to staff reductions.

Work continues to mesh many moving parts and make sure they are ready, regardless. With the state requiring reopening plans be submitted by March 1, Medical Lake has met that deadline.

The reopening plan progress report was presented to the board and as Director of Teaching and Learning, Kim Headrick explained, was submitted to the state on or about Feb. 20.

OSPI will require weekly progress reports and in June needs to see what she referred to as a learning recovery plan. More details on how that effort is to be constructed will appear in April, Headrick said. That includes an idea of what summer instruction might look like as well as health and safety planning.

“They are making sure that we are putting in those mitigation steps to ensure that our students and staff are safe,” Headrick said. She singled out their COVID team which includes administrators and staff saying, “Our health and safety mitigation, did a great job.”

With that cooperation the district was able to respond to a lot of the health and safety questions with a lot of preferable “yes” answers which will ease the reopening effort.

Medical Lake will rely considerably on the experience garnered from the gradual reopening of schools to live and hybrid, learning beginning in October of 2020. That’s when the youngest of the student population began filtering in. That concluded Feb. 1 with middle and high schoolers.

“We’ve made consistent growth,” Headrick said.

Among earlier items in the agenda was the notification that the district had been singled out as a Purple Star designee. This honor, according to a proclamation, is bestowed to districts that have, among other things, “Built a culture of support for military families moving from base to base.”

Paul Delaney is a retired former Free Press Publishing reporter and can be reached at [email protected].