Teachers have been busy getting classrooms ready, custodial staff has done its summer deep cleaning, and school bells will ring to start the new year on Thursday, Aug. 12.

The Escalon Unified School District will welcome students back to classes for the start of the 2021-22 school year on all campuses. Elementary schools are Dent, Collegeville, Farmington and Van Allen, while middle school students will return to El Portal. Escalon High School will open its doors, as will Vista High and the district’s Gateway Academy charter school.

School District Superintendent Ron Costa said following the end of the school year in early June, the district continued on with an extended school year program for Special Education students, which ran for about a month.

The summer school program for K-12 students then ran from July 26 through Aug. 6.

“We ran it just prior to our new school year starting, hoping to give students and staff a break from last year and hoping to give them a jump start into our upcoming school year,” Costa noted.

The district also hosted a Professional Learning Communities (PLC) institute for its staff from July 20 through 22 and had over 110 staff members signed up to attend.

“The biggest construction project going on (during summer) was the parking lot/play field project at Collegeville,” Costa said of major improvement work.

More than two dozen new teachers have also joined the district; look for photos of the new staff members in the Aug. 18 issue.

Information about each campus, such as bell schedules and back to school nights, is available at the district’s website, escalonusd.org. Also, the district will work with those families who want to keep their students on distance learning to start the year.

Meanwhile, athletes are also eager to get back to the courts, fields and courses.

“Physicals Night was a success. We had over 150 student-athletes there to get their physical for the 2021-22 school year,” EHS Athletic Director Nate Bartelink said of the late summer event hosted on the high school campus.

Fall sports at EHS are football, volleyball, cross country and girls golf.

Leading the football program are head coaches Andrew Beam, varsity; Brant Rose, JV; Joey Costa, freshmen. Varsity head volleyball coach is Teresa Williamson with Krystal Rodriguez coaching the JV and Shaylynn Beam leading the freshman girls.

Michael Bower is taking over as the cross country coach and serving as co-coaches for the girls golf team will be Marty Louro and Kristie Cathcart.

For football, a scrimmage is set for this week on the road, the teams traveling to face the Gregori Jaguars on Friday, Aug. 13. Freshmen scrimmage at 5 p.m.; JV and varsity at 7 p.m.

Volleyball gets underway with the annual GEBO – Golden Valley, Escalon, Beyer, Oakdale – scrimmage on Saturday Aug. 14 with a full morning of round robin competition for each team level.

Golfers hit the course at home, hosting West High School, on Tuesday, Aug. 17.

Cross country will go to the Sierra Invitational at Sierra College in Rocklin for their first event, set for Saturday, Aug. 21.