The Winslow Chamber of Commerce held their annual business breakfast and networking event Good Morning Winslow last week. This month’s host was Winslow Unified School District (WUSD) and the presentation was mostly done by Superintendent Connie Gover.
Gover began by giving a brief history on the district with historical pictures from the original schools. She talked about the previous schools that they had in Coopertown and Southside but when she discussed what to do with those buildings, a significant number of audience members were very vocal, sharing in the concern to restore the building.
Gover then discussed the direction of the district including their “PLCs” or professional learning communities, which are meetings between staff where they collaborate on curriculum and discuss best practices. She talked about standardized curriculum a bit more and trying to increase attendance rates for all schools.
Gover than discussed the unique demographics of the district. The population of students in the district is 1,874 among five schools – three elementary, a junior high school and a high school. The district employs more than 250 people and the average class size is 22 students. Students who attend schools in Winslow’s school district reside in 10 different zip codes.
Gover discussed how WUSD has an extraordinarily large boundary from where they must pick up students, and that students residing on the reservation are on the bus to and from school for several hours a day. Gover recalls riding the bus one day to see what some students are having to endure as their daily commute and she describes the reservation route taking more than three and a half hours to complete a round trip, which is part of some students’ everyday pursuits of an education. “And that was good weather,” Gover reminded the audience. She said that reservation roads are often the ones most affected by uncooperative weather, noting that 60% of the student body have a Native American background and their heritage covers 22 tribes.
Gover had the large team she brought from the district introduce themselves and describe what they do. Administrators, teachers and employees also stood up one by one and described their jobs many of them speaking about the impact their works has.
This presentation also took place on the first week of school for the district at 7 a.m. so employees of the district did not have much time before they had to greet their students arriving for their third day of the new school year.
