New Clay High School principal lays out priorities for the school year

SOUTH BEND, Ind.-- A new school year during a pandemic comes with many adjustments.

With an unprecedented beginning only 3 weeks away, former Adams High School Assistant Principal, Chris Berg, just started his new role as principal at Clay High School.

“It’s kind of that thing where I kind of wanted to expand my influence and maybe better improve the system for kids and for teachers,” Berg said.

Berg said that he’s excited to be a new colonial, and is keeping safety as his main priority, and to keep others safe, requirements will be put in place.

“Safety is always the number one priority. The students will be required to wear masks and will be implementing social distancing,” Berg said.
“Spacing, as much as we can, I think, is going to be the key.”

To help students get familiar with these new procedures.

“I plan on making videos for a lot of our procedures, and this is something that I don’t think we did a good job maybe in the past in person, is really taking our kids through the lunch line. You know, that’s always one of the shocking things as a freshman. You walk out of the lunch line with the bug eyes like 'Where do I sit?',” Berg said.

Along with the many changes being implemented, Berg said that the need to communicate is challenging but is still important.

“The needs are still the same,” Berg said. “We need to build relationships with kids. I need to build relationships with the teachers you know, and how we do that is now very different.”

With those difficulties aside, Berg said he will do what it takes for the kids.

“I got into this line of business because I care about kids and so I'm going to do everything I can and we’re going to do everything we can to make sure that kids are safe that our teachers are safe and the people the come into our building are safe,”

Berg said that there are many resources on the SBCSC website, along with a reopening map, which answers many frequently asked questions.