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The Voice of Seguin Today
Volume 55, Number 095
830-379-2234
Seguin ISD looking to The next round of Open Texas begins to take shape today as gyms reopen move up its start date this fall keep its members safe.
Photo courtesy GRWC FB Page By Cindy Aguirre-Herrera (Seguin) – Today is the day to dust off your gym bag. That’s because gym facilities are the among the latest list of operations that can reopen as part of Governor Greg Abbott’s Open Texas Plan. Like most operations, gym facilities and studios will be mandated to operate at 25 percent capacity. Doors have already opened over at the Guadalupe
Regional Wellness Center. Assistant Director Nicole Bruton says they understand the facility plays an important part in the community. She says a large percentage of the population really relies on the facility and its pool to get daily movement and to maintain their healthy lifestyles. She says thanks to input from the hospital’s senior team members, the Wellness Center has put into place all the required safety measures to
“The main change that our members are going to notice is going to be our capacity. We are going to adhere to the capacity percentage outlined by Governor Abbot knowing that changes are going to happen. Things are changing rapidly so as of May 18, when we open, the percentage outlined for us is 25 percent so we have gone ahead and looked at each are of our facilities -- figured out what the max capacity is there and then picked a safe number that will allow for people to utilize the equipment or the area but also continue social distancing. For example, our cardio room, we have a capacity of 12 listed. We’ve gone ahead and made signs for each area so that our members know exactly how many people are allowed. We’ve blocked every other machine off to make sure that there is six feet in between. So, our main goal was to have most of the work done for our members so they could walk in and know that what they are doing is safe. They don’t have to worry about any of that. We’ve taken care of that,” said Bruton.
Superintendent to appoint task force to weigh in on options of year-round school By Cindy Aguirre-Herrera
(Seguin) -- There is a good chance that Seguin ISD students this fall will be returning to school one week earlier. Instead of returning on Aug. 20, students could be heading back to class on Aug. 13. The start date for the 2020-2021 school year, however, might be just the only thing that school district officials can really begin to plan as they still face many unknowns during this COVID-19 pandemic.
so what we are wanting is to add some additional dates soon so we can start to intervene and get these kids on track. So, we want to start kids earlier in August because what if there is a big resurgence in November or December and we are having to close and we lose out in instruction. Thankfully, we have some extra days that we were able to take advantage of in August. It is not drastically different from the calendar that we have adopted. It’s the additional days in August. It reduces the number of professional learning days for teachers. What we are doing right now is we have built in professional learning days that are required in May. So, teachers are going to be engaging in professional learning. So, that’s really the intent and purpose of the calendar that we are presenting today,” said Gutierrez.
Trustees met Thursday night to begin discussion on possible changes to what had already been its adopted school calendar. In fact, the calendar for the upcoming school year was approved about a month before students were told not to return to Laying out those proposed changes for the trustees was Sean Hoffmann, the chief communications officer for class after Spring Break. the Seguin ISD. Superintendent Dr. Matthew Gutierrez says the fluidness of the situation and the fear that the contagious “We essentially bumped up our teachers coming back virus might again interrupt classrooms this two days. They were to come back on the 10th coming school year has created plenty of discussion originally and we are considering having them come anywhere from year-round school to possible back on Aug. 6. That’s the major change. If we go down a little bit and look at October 23, we did have a intercessions throughout the school year. teacher staff day and a student holiday on that date However, for the immediate future, Gutierrez says the originally built it. It was again for professional learning school board will be asked to consider another calendar but in order to keep the 187 day teacher contract in – one that not only pushes up the start date but also place, we made that a holiday. So the Oct. 23 day would be a district holiday. The other change you will notice offers a few minor adjustments. is on Jan. 4. That day was originally scheduled to be a “We’ve got two options that we can look at. We’ve got teacher workday but again in order to consider that 187 the adopted calendar that is approved by the board of teacher contract calendar, we made that an additional trustees and then we have this calendar that we are day on the winter holiday break. So, really there are no looking at and with this calendar, we have made some more additional changes in the second semester,” said changes to start kids back earlier and so there are two Hoffmann. See GYM, page 3 reasons. Kids have lost two months of instruction and See START DATE, page 2
Wayne Looff 210-862-4888