Good morning!  This is Blake Gardner, Superintendent of the Hill City School District. By now you have probably heard that Governor Noem has cancelled South Dakota public schools for next week.  The week of March 23^rd.  The Hill City School District will employ a “Teach from home and Learn From Home” Model.  We ask that everyone works together to make this a success.  Our rationale is that if we can successfully complete distance learning, the SD Department of Education will offer a waiver that will allow us NOT to make up these days.  Which means we could complete school on May 22^nd instead of pushing it into June or possibly later.

• This is uncharted territory and we are trying to go above and beyond as a school district. Luckily, our kids are probably better equipped to handle distance learning than we ever were.  Some important items include:

• If your child has materials or supplies at school, we will be open in the morning on Monday, March 23rd and Tuesday, March 24th. To follow the CDC Guidelines, we have created a schedule that can be found on our website.  hillcity.k12.sd.us or on our district facebook page.

• Email will be the primary form of communication during the closure. All students 3^rd-12^th grade have a state email account and please have them check it daily.  We will have packets or hard drives available for those that don’t have internet access.  We have enabled our internet so that anyone can access it form the parking lot of the street.  The internet is called HC-ACTIVITES.  If any elementary families don’t have a computer or electronic device available, we will have computers that can be checked out on Monday and Tuesday; but we will require a deposit of $25 that will be refunded once the computer is returned. If you, the parent, have not been getting emails from the school over the past week; please contact us and we will update your email in our system.

• We will continue to feed our kids during the closure. The food is FREE to ALL enrolled students.  Let me repeat, the Feds created a program that will allow us to feed all of our enrolled students for free.  Breakfast and lunch will be served in a “Drive Through” or “Grab and Go” method in the Hill City Cafeteria.  Days for pickup are MONDAY and THURSDAY.  Times for pickup are 7:00 AM – 10:00 AM and then 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM.  Again, students can get food on Monday and Thursday from 7-10 or 3-6.  Enough food will be in the bags to last 3 days.  For further accommodations contact Roxann at 574-3012.

• Our facilities will be closed to the community until further notice. The Big Band Dance has been cancelled.

• Finally, thank you for working together with us. This is truly uncharted territory for our school event though many colleges and universities use distance learning.  We will use common sense and we will accommodate you in every way possible to make this a positive experience.  One of my favorite coaching saying is to control the controllables.  There are a lot of things out of our control right now, but we can control our attitude, our effort, and how well we treat one another.  I have been so proud of the solidarity our entire community has shown.  Thank you and it’s a blessing to know that we are all on the same team with the same goal: THE BEST EDUCATION FOR OUR KDIS.

• MAKE TODAY YOUR MASTERPEICE!