With an ongoing pandemic, summer facility projects wrapping up, and new administrative leaders for some buildings, Washington Community Schools Superintendent Willie Stone says they’ve had an amazing first week of classes.

Students, staff, and parents were greeted by new improvements at their respective buildings, including the Stewart Elementary parking lot expansion, a new geothermal heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system at Lincoln Elementary, and a new Lincoln playground.

For the administrative team, Teresa Beenblossom has moved from the Lincoln principal position to be the high school principal replacing Erik Buchholz who is now teaching at the middle school, and district newcomer Susie Lund is Beenblossom’s successor. Stone says overall they have a great team of administrators and teachers to implement the district’s goals, “Our introduction of capturing kids’ hearts is going to be really big and that really focuses on trying to build relationships with all our students and making sure they feel they have a place that they feel safe and secure and our teachers are doing a good job of trying to get to know kids right now making sure that they’re out in the halls talking with them and that’s going to be something that we’ll have to continue out through the rest of the year. We just want our kids to feel comfortable and we want our kids to be able to be successful and the more we can have people relate to our students and they feel like they have someone there for them the better chance our students will be at being successful.”

Other changes for the district this year include no face mask requirements except for on school buses and no remote learning options for students unless they are in quarantine.