SDN September 18, 2020

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SEPTEMBER 2020

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18 WEEKEND EDITION

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LEGEND PLUMBING & ROOTER Br Lic # ML-16126 830 • 303 •3335 By o you ht T oug

Volume 55 • Number 177 830 • 379 • 2234

The Voice of Seguin Today

Seguin ISD Superintendent shares progress report on launching a new school year By Cindy Aguirre-Herrera

to report since opening their doors.

(Seguin) – Now that school has been back in session for a few days, the Seguin Daily News wants to take a closer look at how things are going for the Seguin ISD. Helping to share a few thoughts on the start of this very non-traditional school year is Seguin ISD Superintendent Dr. Matthew Gutierrez. As many are aware, the Seguin ISD was among the last districts in the area to return to learning on Tuesday, Sept. 8.

“I would say, and I had the opportunity to be on a Zoom with area superintendents – that ours as of right now is pretty low. When you are talking about 7,000 students, right now, we are at two positive cases. I think every school district is dealing with positive cases, but I’d say more the larger districts are seeing numbers a little higher than ours. I just believe that we if we continue to do our part as a school system and follow our Blueprint guidelines and our families do their part with hand washing, the wearing of masks in public, the social distancing that we can tackle the problem that exist in our community which will ultimately impact the number of cases that we are seeing in our schools,” said Gutierrez.

Gutierrez says thanks to months of intense planning and hours spent laying out the protocols in the district’s Blueprint for Back to School, he believes the return to school for the 20202021 school year has so far been a good one. “In fact, I was just meeting with a professor from Texas State as I’m going to be serving as a mentor for a student who is working on their superintendent internship and I was asked about the start of school and I was just sharing that this is my, I believe 15th year as an administrator and it is by far been the smoothest year and I thought last year’s start was pretty smooth but considering that there is so much new and so much change as a result of COVID-19 and there is so much opportunity for chaos because there is so much new and so much different, there has been just little to no hiccups to the start of the year whether its face to face or virtual and I’ve just been really blown away with the level of support, flexibility and patience that we have received from staff, from parents, from people in the community. It has really taken an entire village to make sure that this very unique and interesting start of the year kicked off smoothly,” said Gutierrez. The risk of having to report COVID-19 cases, of course, is among any district’s top concerns now that students are back in the classroom. He says fortunately for the district, there hasn’t been a surge in cases like what other districts have had

Looking at the instructional day itself, Gutierrez says things have dramatically improved since the actual first day. He says it appears as though everyone is now getting comfortable with the new routines and expectations for the day. “The first day started a little slow because we were checking temperatures. We were making sure every kid sanitized their hands coming in. It was just a new system. Parents were dropping off. They couldn’t go walk their little ones to the classroom. So, it did start off a little slow so there was a lot of backup traffic but parents were very patient and I’m very thankful for that and very understanding when they learned that they couldn’t walk their kindergartener to class. I appreciate just how patient people have been especially in neighborhoods where there was a lot of traffic, community members being patient and parents being patient with the slow moving car lines but things are finally moving along and we It appears to be smooth sailing for the Seguin ISD as are getting used to how we are going to operate right now it conquers its first nine days of school. Students at during this pandemic,” said Gutierrez. Koennecke Elementary illustrate learning during the See PROGRESS, page 2 2020 pandemic. Photo courtesy Koennecke Facebook

Melanie Esqueda 830-221-5688


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