Memorial’s first week of school wouldn’t have been as successful if not for the countless hours of behind-the-scenes work done by the administrators.
“Whenever you’re building new things, tiny things come about, and as soon as you find them, you try to find a solution for it,” assistant principal Kimberly Jans-Stutz said.
One of the challenges the team faced was figuring out how many trash cans they needed for the huge building and where to order them from just weeks before school started. They also needed to order door mats and fix the lack of electricity in some of the science classrooms.
“When we were trying to set everything up, we were doing about 20,000 steps a day because of how much we have to walk back and forth and around every day,” Jans-Stutz said. “That’s a lot of steps.”
Besides a few hiccups, most of the prep work went well due to careful planning that began as early as last school year.
“I think that coming into everything preparation-wise, we came in extremely prepared and executed a plan,” assistant principal Patrick Moore said. “Obviously with every plan we’re going to monitor what’s going on and make adjustments based off the things we see that need to be adjusted.”
Even after the first day of school began, administration was continuing to make adjustments to the building as they saw problems arise. For example, they added additional seating to the cafeteria to help with overcrowding issues.
“Our word, our phrase this year with the admin is ‘pivot,’” Jans-Stutz said. “We’ve definitely learned how to take what’s coming at us and then move the other direction, and just keep moving forward with it.”
Of course, the rest of Memorial’s staff and teachers also played a large part in getting the building and their own individual classrooms ready for the first day.
“We’ve got a wonderful staff that’s got everybody’s backs, and it’s been very helpful that everybody’s been very collaborative together,” Moore said.
While the administrators’ work may have been tedious and draining at times, it was all worth it in the end to have the first couple days go so smoothly.
“I’m excited, I think the kids are excited,” Jans-Stutz said. “I think they were ready to come back a little more just to get in the building and of course see all of their friends. I think it’s going to be a great year. I’m just looking forward to it.”
