Students return to school Monday in District 1

Students in Sheridan County School District 1 will return to their classrooms this coming Monday.

District 1 Superintendent Pete Kilbride and administrators of the schools in Big Horn, Ranchester and Dayton shared their plans with the district’s trustees in a meeting this week.

Kilbride said he and others in the district are very excited about having a “normal start” to the school year.

Kilbride said the procedure for gathering in large groups is probably the biggest concern of school personnel. He said those gatherings tend to be in the school cafeterias and auditoriums.

He said each principal has made his or her own plans for lunches in the schools, with some adjusting the lunch-time schedules to avoid all the students having lunch at the same time while others are splitting students between the cafeterias and the gyms for lunch to allow for more distancing.

He said the number of people allowed in school auditoriums at any one time are also being limited.

Students will be required to wear masks when they arrive at school and any time they are in common spaces. Kilbride said they will be allowed to remove their masks when they’re with their cohorts in a classroom, but masks are required in areas such as hallways.

He said at this time, class sizes haven’t been limited, but class sizes in School District 1 already are typically 22 students or less.

Kilbride said the district’s goal as students go back to school is to make the experience feel as much like a normal school start as possible.