By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News
As the Carbon School District awaits the first ring of the bell on Thursday, Aug. 14, Superintendent Mika Salas is ecstatic for the return of students.
Superintendent Salas joined the KOAL newsroom to discuss the upcoming school year, provide updates on the district’s construction projects and encourage parents to be involved in their students’ education.
“It’s too quiet in the summer,” said Salas. “At the district office, we work all summer, and it’s definitely noticeably quieter, and we really are ready for kids and our staff to be back. We miss everyone. We want to see them again.”
Over the summer, the district underwent several construction projects. Salas provided an update on their progress,” So we have a lot going on. Some are obvious. Some of our projects you can see and people want to know about them. Others are more behind the scenes or some infrastructure and different things or carpeting and cabinetry that maybe only that teacher might notice. But yes, all that’s kind of wrapping up. We’re still hard at it, though. We go clear until school starts, with some classroom renovations and different things. And so that will be ongoing throughout the end of this week for sure.”
Salas added,” The big one probably is our field house construction, which is on our property at the district office. It will act as an auxiliary gym for Mont Harmon when it’s finished. And then also a great facility for our non-season sports and other people to use. And so we’re super excited for that. We, as you know, added two sports, boys’ volleyball and girls’ wrestling, recently. And we just don’t have enough gym space to accommodate everyone. And then, with inclement weather, our spring sports need a place to practice. And so this will be great.”
Changing topics, Salas encouraged parents to register for the district’s parent portal. “We’ve had it since we switched to PowerSchool, but we have had minimal involvement from the parents on the parent portal, really overall. And we’re encouraging parents to access the parent portal. There’s a bunch of information on our webpage right on the front page that you can click on to set up an account if you need to, or reenroll your returning students. And so we’d encourage parents to jump on those. And we do want our parents to be connected. And there’s a bunch of settings on there. They can be notified of grades, attendance, all kinds of other lunch balances, just all kinds of information.”
Registration for the parent portal is available here.
Another parent-focused addition to the district is a new transportation website, “We really are trying to respond to the needs and maybe to some things that haven’t gone well in the past that we’re trying to fix. And our transportation director, Justin Wild, has spent a ton of time this summer on the new website. And if any of you out there who have students who will be riding a bus to school this year with the district, if you get on that transportation website, you’ll be able to register your child to ride the bus. It’ll have all the information and all the documentation that you need to sign.”
She continued,” It also has a ton of information about the stops. So you can see where the buses will stop, the times they’ll be there, all of that kind of thing. So we’re hoping to get ahead of that and proactively get in front of the questions that we know they’ll ask.”
The transportation website is available here.
Salas continued on the transportation theme, encouraging citizens to be aware behind the wheel as students return to school. “We know you’re in a hurry to get somewhere … And we’re not maybe used to watching kids. And it’s still warm outside. And there will be more walkers, of course, as we start school. And as the weather starts to cool off, we have fewer walkers. But right now, after school, as we get started, we’d love the community to help us out.”
Breaking things down to a personal level, Salas explained what she is most excited about with the start of the school year,” There’s just an energy to it that you just don’t get anywhere else. I just love school. School is just the best place to be. It’s just the best. So many memories are made, so many wonderful things happen. And there’s nothing like it. It’s the best job in the world. It’s the best environment in the world. And we all look forward to it every year.”
Closing out our conversation, Salas shared,” Thank you again to everyone for all of your support. Again, the people who have students in our system who come to everything, we appreciate you. We also have a large number of people who don’t have kids anymore in the system. Maybe they’ve grown and left town or whatever. But we have so much support from friends, family and neighbors. And, it does take the whole village. So if you’re helping someone in any way, any of our kids want to say thank you.”