Letter from the Superintendent
School Technology Reliance
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I hope this communication finds all of you happy and healthy as we enter this Labor Day weekend! I hope you are able to enjoy time with family and friends, while remembering that the Labor Day holiday is one that honors our nation’s workers. To this end I would like to thank those that make “school” happen. Our work starts in the classroom with teachers and paraeducators. Staff whose direct work with students makes a difference every day. But, like all businesses, schools have a lot of other employees whose work is essential for making “school” happen. In no particular order, we couldn’t have school without our transportation staff, custodians, nutrition staff, nurses, secretaries, building and grounds crew, and so many more. I know I am so grateful for the work that all of our Treynor CSD staff does on a daily basis to make our schools a special place and hope you keep them in mind as you think about people whose work makes a difference this Labor Day weekend.
When thinking about all of the workers in a school and how their work makes a “school” day happen it is easy to see that while the core of our work is teaching and learning, a school day has more moving parts than just a classroom. Many of those things outside the classroom are essential to making a school day happen. The easiest example we can all relate to is when weather impacts transportation and how that can impact the entire school. Today we are dealing with the modern reality of the impacts of technology on a school day. Not the need for the internet for the classroom for teaching and learning, but the reality that the loss of technology impacts our communication and safety. Schools, like so many other businesses, rely on technology to support things like phone systems, medical support tied to the internet, access to student emergency information, and the list goes on. Like so many businesses and schools, our district’s phone systems do rely on internal and external network access to function.
While it may seem that some of these items may have limited implications to teaching and learning, they do play a major role in our response to safety and crisis situations. We may not always think about these “what if” situations, but they are real possibilities and we cannot ignore them. No differently than our approach to weather situations. With weather we make decisions for school based on “what if’s” related to safety and whether to have school or not. We all have experienced situations in which we feel like school may have been delayed or canceled and thought, “they could have gone to school.” I’ve also been in those situations, but safety is our number one priority and with such a situation, opinions will run the continuum.
Unlike weather, technology hardware failures, like we are experiencing, would hopefully allow for more control on our part, but things didn’t work out that way this time. But what I can tell you is that we will look at this situation and try to take corrective actions to avoid such a situation in the future. Yes, like other businesses, we are sometimes dependent upon contractors, equipment deliveries, availability of workers, etc., to complete necessary work to ensure our schools continue to operate. When there is an issue the key is to learn from it and look for corrective actions to take in the future to avoid similar situations. These responses would include the timing of work and so on, they would also include our response if our phones would ever be compromised in a similar fashion and how we could respond so that teaching and learning can continue without impacting the safety of our students and staff. Rest assured that we will work to have viable options in the future in an attempt to avoid having to consider closing.
Thank you for your support and know that we lead with ensuring that our work and decisions have a priority of the safety of our students and staff.
Have a great Labor Day weekend!
Dr. Joel Beyenhof
Superintendent
jbeyenhof@treynorcardinals.org