The Big Sandy Mountaineer -

On Sunday, March 15th Governor Bullock announced he was closing schools across Montana due to rising concerns about the Coronavirus. We had already planned to take the next day off as a snow day and we used it to make plans for how we would proceed with distance learning. On Monday teachers made plans and bagged up things the students would need. On Tuesday we passed out materials in a drive up situation at the Elementary and High School. And on Wednesday, just three days later, our students were receiving online instruction! What an incredible job the teachers, staff, students, parents and community did to get our kids learning so quickly. We are fortunate in our district that each student has a device; Kindergarten and First Grade students each have iPads, 2nd through 12th grade students each have a chromebook. They are also very versed in using their devices and most teachers use Google classroom during regular school so it was easy to transition to distance learning. Here’s a little breakdown of how the numbers looked for distance learning:

• 10 Weeks

• 40 days

• Too many hours to count as most teachers and students worked more days than just Monday through Thursday

• 5,878 Meals

• 31 rooms deep cleaned and disinfected

• Countless hours of google meets and video lessons

• One million emails (I don’t know if that’s accurate but it’s sure what it felt like)

• 6 School Board Meetings

• 1 Graduation on the Football Field

• 200 Students and 39 Staff Members happy to be done!

We did a great job of dealing with this crazy situation and we have lots of plans and ideas of how to do it better next time, even though we are all praying there isn’t a next time!