Over six weeks have passed since the Fountain Hills Unified School District opened doors to students. In that time, fundraisers, sports and quarantine periods have occurred. The Times spoke with Superintendent Kelly Glass and all three principals in the district to get an inside look at the start of the 2021 school year.

When Glass arrived in Fountain Hills last year, the district office operated separately from the schools and the schools were separate from each other. COVID-19 became something of a bonding experience that gave administrators an additional reason to appease the parents who had been asking for more uniform processes and procedures between the three schools.

Since coming together, the administrators have worked well. The district put together comprehensive staff and student handbooks, and there was an all staff meeting this summer where teachers and administrators gathered in high spirits and met face to face. They discussed learning and behavioral expectations, as well as three district-wide initiatives.

“The expectation this year was we would have everybody back on campus and we would be able to focus on the ins and outs of education because all the challenges would be behind us,” Fountain Hills Middle School Principal Jeffrey Markle said. “All the challenges are still with us, but our staff and students have handled them beautifully. We’ve had great support from the community, but it does feel great to have a sense of normalcy with our sports and clubs back and seeing 95 to 97 percent of our students back with smiles on their faces.”

The three district initiatives were Beyond Textbooks, the Schools PLP program and Positive Behavior Interventions and Support (PBIS). The schools want to have a better grasp on Beyond Textbooks, an online curriculum framework that provides students and teachers with all the Arizona educational standards and assessments. Those standards help the teachers who use Schools PLP, which stands for Personalized Learning Plan, as an online teaching platform. There are 53 students who do online learning only still, and teachers upload short instructional videos for them and anyone else who misses class time.

“I don’t think that there’s any kind of replacement for the interaction between teacher and student,” Markle said. “I believe, now more than ever, that we need to continue to help our kids socially, emotionally and help them grow as learners…Technology platforms are an excellent tool to help our kids, but I still believe we need that classroom interaction with the professionals.”

Markle and the middle school were the first to implement PBIS in the district last year. Superintendent Glass said she wants the PBIS program to build a shared culture of kindness and respect in the district. McDowell Mountain Elementary School is still in Tier 1 of PBIS, but as kids mature, the lessons will be more applicable for their age.

“I think it helps the teachers be proactive instead of reactive,” Fountain Hills High School Principal Chris Hartmann said. “Acknowledging and recognizing behaviors prevents [students] from turning to negative behaviors…We’ve had some minor discipline issues, but I feel like there’s a direct correlation between PBIS and the lack of major discipline issues. So far, I think it’s kept the focus on learning and academic rigor.”

Students earn Falcon Feathers for good behavior and are entered in a reward drawing each week they earn a feather. There’s also a quarterly and yearly drawing.

Challenges

Markle, the sole returning principal from last school year, said the differences between last year and this year are “not night and day different.” He did say that challenges with COVID are a little easier now that the staff has a year under it’s belt dealing with it, but it’s still not a perfect situation.

“I feel that the narrative in all parts of education is ‘what kind of impact did the last year have on students and their ability to learn and retain information,’” Markle said. “I truly think that kids are more resilient than we give them credit for and they’re continuing to catch themselves up and continuing to be where they need to be.”

McDowell Mountain Elementary School’s Principal, Dr. Shelly Jensen, emphasized the communication challenges with younger students when they or the teacher wears a mask. All students have dealt with the muffling of sound behind a mask, but younger students struggle since they don’t understand as many visual communication cues as older students.

Unfortunately, that’s not the only way COVID has affected students’ learning environment.

“We spend a lot of our time in the school day on cleaning,” Jensen said. “Some of our specialist teachers release kids five minutes early because they have kids back-to-back-to-back. I just wonder if we calculated how much time we spend washing our hands, hand sanitizing and washing our desks, how much academic time is lost.”

Glass said she is aware of all these challenges and more within the district. One issue that has been going on for longer than the pandemic and is an issue across the state is a teaching shortage. The December 2020 results of a survey done by Arizona School Personnel Administrators Association says that 27 percent of teaching vacancies are left unfilled.

Fountain Hills has a good student to teacher ratio, but the high school currently does not have a band teacher. There is an upcoming election later this year for two district overrides that directly affect the schools’ capital and ability to pay teachers competitively and fill vacancies.

Glass, the administrators, teachers and other staff have all received feedback and been busy trying to do their jobs. Glass will meet with different staff members during fall break to discuss questions and feedback after the first school quarter. She and everyone else want to make this a great year for the students, but there needs to be communication and understanding at the district.

“Sometimes it’s really hard to put away all the issues around COVID,” Glass said. “But at the end of the day, we really do just try to focus on instruction for the kids.”