Pinnacle Schools is busily preparing for another school year that is set to begin on August 17. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, extra precautions will be taken this year to protect the students, faculty and staff. Castle Country Radio spoke with Principal, Roberta Hardy over the telephone about those precautions.

“We will start our Line of Defense, we’re calling it at the bus stops and in people’s cars when they drop their kids off. So we have a aide on every school bus that will do temperature checks before your child gets on; if its too high they’ll be sent home right from the bus stop. If you are dropping off your child and the temperature is too high, then we’ll send them home,” said Principal Hardy. As a continued safety measure, temperatures will again be taken at the school upon arrival and another time throughout the day. The school is trying to introduce a culture of staying home when you are sick, this belief is also being shared with faculty and staff.

Students will no longer be allowed to change classrooms this year. Again, this is another precaution to keep everyone safe. “Kindergarten through eighth grade will stay in there rooms and they’ll have lunch brought to them. I mean for contact tracing purposes, if we leave them all in one room, then we can say, okay, only one group of students have been exposed or one group of students have to be quarantined and not the entire school,” stated Principal Hardy. The junior high teachers will be mobile as they will be able to rotate to each of the classrooms to teach their students. However, this will not work for the high school students. School officials will let ninth graders out at a certain time, sophomores at another time etc. etc. to allow them to switch classes while minimizing the amount of students walking through the hallways.

When the school faced the soft closure in March they had to scramble around to meet up with students to assign them an iPad so that they were able to do their school work during the closure. This was especially difficult for the elementary students as junior high and high school students always are assigned an iPad at the beginning of the school year. Things will be a bit different this year because the school wants to be prepared this time around if there happens to be another closure issued. “First day of school, everyone assigned an iPad, everyone. But they go home with that iPad, every night they log in and do one assignment. Whether that assignment is just simply logging in and signing your name. So if we ever have to go home again, or you get quarantined, or there’s a reason that you are home like you’re sick or something then they’re use to using those iPads and they’re use to doing it,” said Principal Hardy. Classroom instruction will be video taped each day so that if a student misses a class for one reason or another they will have access to what was discussed on that day.

Registration day will be held on August 4 and August 5 from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm at the Pinnacle High School parking lot and this is for grades first through twelfth. Kindergarten students will register on August 6 from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm at the Elementary parking lot. Masks are required to attend the registration events. “Parents can always register at home if you have already been with us then you know how to do that. So they can either come in person or they can register online. We have some openings in some classes, and quite a few classes that are full, so you just come and if we don’t have an opening we’ll put you on the waiting list,” said Principal Hardy. To learn more about Pinnacle Schools visit their website at https://www.pcaschool.com/