No School Friday, March 19: staff will report for instructional planning

Due to the rapid increase in COVID-19 cases that have impacted the Pierz area, Pioneer Elementary School and Healy High School will not be in session on Friday, March 19, 2021.

• Any school events planned for Friday or Saturday will still occur as planned.
• Buses will still run to pick up and drop off students for Holy Trinity.

We are taking this day to hopefully provide some relief relative to this rapid spread. This will also allow staff some much needed time to catch up from the challenges the last 10 days have created by the number of students not able to attend school. 

Those staff who are saddled with the challenge of teaching students who are at home while teaching those students who are in school simply cannot meet that challenge adequately when the numbers get too large. This is why many districts have gone to permanent 4-day weeks or days off every other week, etc. We, instead, have tried to maximize our in-person time by running our normal school day every day.  For the most part, that has been working well and we are getting the most instructional time with the most students. Our goal is to modify it only when we have to, which is what we are faced with now.

We apologize for this inconvenience. We hope this wave passes quickly. We are very, very thankful for the resilience our staff have shown by pushing through these challenges as much as possible and keeping our expectations of learning to a high standard.

We also are very, very thankful students are doing all they can to keep school in session despite the added rules placed upon us. The same thanks goes out to our parents. It is a challenge. It is unfair to be the victim of contact tracing. We can minimize how it affects learning progress by doing all we can to keep the school year rolling and try to get the most out of each day we have.

We (staff, students and parents) can take pride in what we have done.  Our challenges have been less than many others. Our combined efforts have yielded very good results across many grade levels, courses, and activities.Compared to what was lost last March, April and May, this school year so far has been very successful. It is not over, but we have made it to mid-March. We have had complete activity seasons, competitions, recent concerts, and we still look forward to the musical next week.

We appear to be blessed with an early spring which may help get more activities outside which also hopefully helps decrease the spread. We remain steadfast in our goal to give our students the best year possible, and we will continue to go above and beyond to get the most out of this school year.