A new year at Royal School District

ROYAL CITY — As summer starts its slow spill into fall, another school year has begun at the Royal School District and students are heading to their classrooms.

Royal School District students and parents may have already noticed nearby construction and demolition at the site of the Red Rock Elementary modernization project, where the district is doing extensive renovation following burst pipes and flooding damage caused January 2017.

Construction is being segmented to half the school at a time to provide space for students, some of whom are also attending classes in portables brought in after flooding early last year. The Renovation for the elementary school is slated for completion in the fall of 2019.

Though final enrollee numbers for Red Rock Elementary School students haven’t been tallied, the district as a whole appears to have seen a nominal uptick in student population. Though there are nine fewer children attending middle school in the district this year, there are 52 more attending high and intermediate schools.

The district has taken on 27 new hires this year — 12 at the high school, four at the middle school, three at the intermediate school and six at the elementary school. The district has also hired a new assistant superintendent and a new school psychologist.

School psychologists can be a particularly difficult staff member for some school districts to hire, and are qualified to handle mental health crisis in ways that counselors are not. The cost of hiring such a highly certified individual can be prohibitive for many districts, and it is not unusual for smaller districts to not have one available.