NORTH LOGAN – School is starting up this week in area elementary and secondary schools.
Last week on KVNU’s For the People program we talked to administrators and teachers in the Logan City School District and also to the Assistant Superintendent of Elementary Education in the Cache County School District (CCSD) Gary Thomas.
He was asked what’s new for this school year in the CCSD.
“Let me start off with 94 new teachers…yeah, most people are surprised by that. But we usually hire about a hundred teachers a year in the Cache County School District,” said Thomas.
He said they have around 1,200 total teachers in the district.
Thomas said something else that’s new this year is a new reading program that they had to bring all the teachers up to speed on at a professional development day last week. Another huge number is the 12,000 students transported to and from school every day.
“One of the new things is, there’s an app that parents this year will be able to download and put on their smartphone. I don’t know about you, but I grew up in a rural area and we had to watch for the bus and my siblings are watching and somebody hollers, ‘the bus is at the Christensen’s!…the bus is on the corner, we’ve got to get out!’ This new app is really cool.”
In addition to downloading onto their smartphone, parents can put in an alert zone and an address and choose which busses they want to follow.
Thomas was asked about the need for more bus drivers and crossing guards.
“We are always looking for bus drivers, that is one that we always seem to have a need for and could not…talk about behind the scenes and not being able to do it without them. Those are kind of some unsung heroes.
“A little bit of a misnomer on crossing guards, we do not hire crossing guards. Those are not district employees, those are actually from individual cities. So, that’s outside of our jurisdiction, but you’ve got a lot of cities and communities that may still be looking for those folks, I don’t know.”
The 2024-25 school year starts Thursday in the Cache district.