Archive: Around Town

Have you ever seen a detective show where the police find an empty home, but the food on the table is still hot and a cup of coffee is steaming? That is what the Lansing school buildings are like right now. Getting personal items back to students and school property back to the schools is one of the logistical problems district officials are working on solving.

"Sometimes you walk around the school and it literally looks like people just left one day and didn't come back. There are lockers filled with things and there are a lot of things in the lost and found," Lansing School Superintendent Chris Pettograsso told the Board of Education Monday evening.

Pettograsso said plans are being made to figure out what belongs to which students and deliver the materials to their homes. At the same timehundreds of chrome books, iPads, and wifi hotspots, other devices, and musical instruments were loaned to students so that they could continue the school year from home during the coronavirus pandemic. Pettograsso said they will be collected so they can be inventoried, updated, and re-imaged for the upcoming school year.

"All of those items, though we see the value of people having them over the summer, they will need to get picked up before the end of the school year. So we will be creating a, a pickup schedule for all the devices," she said.

Pettograsso said that district officials understand that some students may need to continue using the school devices and musical instruments for practice during the summer, and said that those items will be delivered back to students after they have been inventoried and worked on. In the meanwhile, student property that was left at school is being rounded up and organized so it can be returned.

"We will try to get everything put together, putting bags with their name on them and get them delivered," she said. "It may be -- as we get a little closer towards the end of the year, if we're allowed -- that people could come pick up their things. But right now we're looking solely at a drop off of all materials, right to your house."

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