With the conclusion of the most recent school year, one Guthrie County school district faced the challenges head on. 

West Central Valley Co-Superintendent Rusty Shockley says the most recent school year completed in May was challenging for school districts all across the state. Shockley says some of the most difficult things were transitioning students to virtual learning. 

“When you started the year out there was just a lot of unknowns. Everything from the safety protocols that we had to put in place to jumping teachers into the virtual learning platform that they had never done and then trying to keep things just as normal as possible for the students. It was definitely a challenging year.”

Shockley tells Raccoon Valley Radio that staff and students took all the changes in stride while navigating through the school year. Shockley says there were also difficult decisions for the school board to make.

“I would go back to the decision we had to make in the late fall that was challenging for us was the decision to go to masks. It ended up being pretty unanimous. If it weren’t for the quarantining piece I don’t know that it would have been.”

Shockley says in terms of the next school year he hopes things continue to return to a more normal setting.