Heather Grumley was named Superintendent of Garfield Re-2 School District in April 2020. She is a lifelong Garfield School District No. Re-2 educator and has "grown up" in the district she now leads. Listen as she shares a little bit about herself in the very first "Re-2 is You" Podcast.

Hello Garfield Re-2. This week, we're adding a new feature - messages from our directors with some key information about their departments by video. We hope that you will enjoy hearing from our staff. The information of course will also be available in the Garfield, Re-2 news so that you can refer back to it later. In this week's news, you'll find great information about the new quarantine regulations. We've been able to reduce the time down to 10 days. There's also COVID-19 testing information, zoom links for the January 11th school board meeting and more. But now let's hear from our director of nutrition services, Mary McPhee, and our director of transportation, Penny Cooper.

Hello, Garfield Re-2 to. My name is Mary McPhee. I'm the director of nutrition services for Re-2. I try to bring your kids the healthiest meals possible every day. We've had a lot of questions about the universal free meals program. And I wanted to let you know that we will continue to serve your kids breakfast and lunch for free till the end of the school year, we wanted to remind all those virtual and students quarantining and at home that we can also provide free breakfast and lunches as well. Just call your school by 9:00 AM. And we will have a warm lunch waiting for you and breakfast for the next day. Don't forget. We are still taking free and reduced applications. These forms are very important for more reasons than just school. Lunch applications are included in the newsletter. We need your help. If you haven't already, please take a minute to fill out those forms and return them to your school.

Thank you. My name is Penny Cooper and I'm the director of transportation. I'm in charge of bringing your kids to and from school safely every day. I want to say thank you to all of our families out there who are making sure that their kids have their bus pass when they get on and off the bus every day when kids use their bus passes, it makes it so much easier for us to find them. If parents are missing them, if the student was on the bus, we can tell very quickly where they got off. And at what time this gives parents a valid place to start looking almost immediately and lends a feeling of empowerment to parents to have a starting place when they are very worried. It also gives our drivers and our district so much more peace of mind knowing that every single student is being accounted for. It makes me feel so much better as the director, in case of an emergency that we have a way to quickly pass, accurate, needed information to appropriate authorities. If needed to expedite emergency care, we need to be able to identify every student that it is that is on the bus every day. And if a driver were to be incapacitated, we need an accurate list of kids. Huge, thanks to all of our parents, district leaders, teachers, and community members for helping us transport our students in the safest way possible.

Hello, Garfield Re-2. We are back with another video podcast feature for this week's newsletter. Remember that everything we talk about here will be available in the Garfield Re-2 News so that you can refer back to it later. In this week's Garfield Re-2 News, you will find information about the new dates, times, and locations for COVID-19 testing, our Season B spectators plans, and the top five from this week's school board meeting. Right now, let's hear from our director of nutrition services, Mary McPhee, and our director of facilities, John Oldham.

Mary Mcphee:

Hello, I am Mary McPhee, the director of nutrition services here at Re-2. As you know, all kids are eating breakfast and lunch free until the end of the year. I thought you might want to know that if a child is eating breakfast and lunch every day from the beginning of the school year until the end of that semester, the savings is $410. If you have two or three children in our district, the savings could be to your family over $1,200. Isn't that great? Please encourage your children to eat at school and take advantage of this wonderful savings for your family.

Mary Mcphee:

We had four people download the free and reduced application after last week. Just a reminder that those applications need to be filled out because they fund more than just meals. Please fill this application out as soon as you can, turn it into your school, and it will help our whole district out a lot. We are serving lunches out of a reusable green clamshell, like this. This keeps the food hot and it can be washed and reused, and by doing this, we have diverted thousands of pounds of styrofoam out of the landfill and we have saved this district over $100,000 in disposables.

Mary Mcphee:

We are starting a weekly shout out to our food service staff this week, and today we are honoring Ms. Krystal Magee at Coal Ridge High School. Krystal has done the work of two people in her kitchen and worked all alone since Thanksgiving. The staff at Coleridge has helped us get the students fed, and we'd like to give a big thanks to Dr. Davis and her team. Yesterday, Ms. Krystal served more than ever before and we want to thank her for her hard work. Remember, download the application, pick one up from your school, and we'll see you next week.

John Oldham:

My name's John Oldham. I'm the facilities director for Garfield Re-2. This past week and a half, we've been working on spectator plans to have our parents be able to watch their youngsters play sports and the wrestling and basketball in season B. We've had a great set of parents helping us with this throughout the process and giving us input, and our athletic director has been working tirelessly to get this accomplished in such a short time. You can find this in our newsletter and you can find our newsletter on our website for Garfield Re-2. I really appreciate everyone out there in this trying times. Our number one goal is to keep the kids in-person, because we all know that's what's best for them and for Garfield County in general, and looking forward to a great basketball and wrestling season. Good luck, Titans, Bears, Vikings, and Cubs, and have a great season. Everyone stay safe and stay well.