By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News

As the school year continues to march into warmer weather, students at the Castle Valley Center continue to engage in educational activities, with more opportunities presenting themselves as community volunteers continue to work with the school.

Principal Amy Bell joined the KOAL newsroom to share the school’s appreciation for the volunteers who give so much to the Castle Valley Center, as well as to preview upcoming student events.

First speaking on the warming weather, Bell shared fun activities that students would be engaging in: “We get to start heading out. Some of our post-high school students are leaving to head upstate to an all-ability center that offers rock climbing and rafting. That gives us a great opportunity to go and do some things our students may not always get an opportunity to do.”

Continuing the theme of accessibility, Bell sang the praises of the many accessible playgrounds that have been appearing across Castle Country. “I know we have the playground in Helper that was just put in. That’s been great. Our district has been great to work with us and help us expand our playground so that we have more accessible equipment for our students to play with.”

Many of the leaps in accessibility have been made possible by major community support. Bell gave thanks to some of the major players who have helped bring activities to the Castle Valley Center. 

“We have lots of community partnerships that bring, and they always remember our school and make sure activities come to us if we can’t go to them,” shared Bell. “Komatsu brings the monster truck to our school. We’ve had Adult Probation come every Christmas to visit our students and participate in some activities with them. USU has a group that comes every year to lead a Build-A-Bear activity for us and engage with our students. Bentley Bennett, who is one of our high school students, actually comes and teaches our dance every week for our students. We just had the Living Aquarium from upstate come down and do a presentation. Les Schwab hosted a magician to come through. So we’re extremely grateful.”

Moving to a district-wide perspective, Bell reminded parents that kindergarten registration is currently open. “We are currently taking names for people who want to enroll in our preschools for the fall. And some of our schools fill up very quickly, so if people are interested in enrolling in our preschools district-wide, they can contact the district office and ask for Danny Tuttle, or they can get on the district website and look under preschool.”

The principal added,” I know this coming year we’re looking to try to make it more accessible to people. I know there’s going to be some free and reduced lunch discounts, so if people qualify for free and reduced lunch, they’d also get a discount on their monthly rate. We’re trying to really expand and get services to all kids.

Closing our conversation, Bell stated,” We’re just very grateful for everybody. And anybody who’s interested and thinking they may have something that would engage our students, they can get a hold of us at the Castle Valley Center.”

To stay up to date with the Castle Valley Center, you can visit the school’s website here.