The Stevensville Schools have continued to adapt and adjust lunch programs and educational services for distance and home based learning during the COVID-19 school closure.
The school lunch program has continued to make both breakfast and lunch available to all students. The Stevensville Food Service program shifted to sack meals that require little in home preparation, or can be easily heated in a microwave oven. The meals are delivered to students via the school bus route system and via two general delivery points. Buses are currently running all morning routes to drop off both a breakfast and lunch bag for every student that meets the bus. The District also makes these meals available from 10 a.m. to 12 noon in the Burnt Fork Market parking lot and at the bus stop near the intersection of Illinois Bench and Airport roads.
The food service delivery program has been in place since March 17th and has seen steady growth in participation numbers as the coronavirus closures and stay-at-home orders continue. The first day of the meal delivery program saw 199 students receive meals. As of April 8th, the number of students receiving meals increased to 412.
Stevensville Food Service manager Jenna Henning states, “Due to the large number of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch programming, it is important to make sure these children have access to meals the meet USDA nutritional standards. The food service staff has been working extremely hard to make sure students in the community have access to food on a daily basis. Our program is vital to the students and families during this difficult financial time.”
In addition to keeping students in the community fed with the meal program, the Stevensville Schools continue to adapt to home based and online learning. Programming for early elementary students is especially difficult as younger students frequently struggle with technical skills to log into online learning environments. With this in mind, the K-3 teaching staff has prepared and copied learning packets for students. Teachers, volunteers, and administration from the K-3 School have arranged for material pickup via car to keep students supplied with learning materials.
The staff has also been working to insure students engage in learning through online classrooms, projects, and electronic materials. Teachers are making personal contact via phone and helping students through any means available. The most common message from staff is that the personal interaction with their students is greatly missed. Principal Jessica Shourd said, “Educators develop significant relationships with their students and it is important for our students to know we miss them as much as they miss us.” Shourd and her staff spent the day Wednesday greeting parents and students in the drop-off loop at the school handing learning materials and saying hello from a distance and through car windows.
In the upper grade levels, students are working in live and asynchronous online environments which allows students to attend live sessions with their teachers and peers but also allows for student engagement when convenient or when a computer is available in the home. This is important for families with limited connectivity and multiple students in a household that need to access online instruction.
The one point all Stevensville School administrators agree upon is that they miss students at the school and distance learning is an evolving process for everyone. Students are working hard, teachers are working hard and everyone is making the best of a very difficult situation.