How to restart schools during a pandemic

Three weeks ahead of the scheduled start of school, the Port Washington-Saukville School District on Monday released its detailed strategy for returning students to classrooms part-time during a pandemic that shows no signs of relent.

The district’s “re-entry plan,” which was presented to the School Board Monday, details strategies for distancing students in buildings, requires face masks regardless of state mandate, aims to improve online teaching, calls for the district to hire its own contact tracer and includes a complex Covid-19 exposure protocol that will send students and staff members who have been exposed to the coronavirus home for weeks.

The re-entry plan adds detail to the school reopening framework approved by the board last month that calls for students at Port Washington High School and Thomas Jefferson Middle School to attend in-person classes two days a week and participate in online classes three days a week. Under the so-called cohort model, students at both schools will be divided into two groups, with one group attending classes on Mondays and Tuesdays and the other in school on Thursdays and Fridays.

At the district’s three elementary schools, where there is more room to separate students and in-person instruction is seen as more important, students will be in school four days a week and be taught online one day a week.

All schools, which will be cleaned daily, will be closed on Wednesdays for deep cleaning. 

Although the Port Washington-Saukville School District is one of, if not the only school system in Ozaukee and Washington counties not planning a full-time return to classrooms, administrators said Monday that a split schedule at the high school and middle school, which each have enrollments of about 800 students, is critical to keeping students properly separated and gives the district the best chance of averting another school shutdown.

“If we had our entire student body in the building at one time, social distancing would be impossible,” Port High Principal Thad Gabrielse said. “Even with the cohort system, it will be difficult.”

Not included in the re-entry plan is the criteria for transitioning between the district’s four phases of instruction, which range from online-only education to full-time, in-person classes. 

With their split schedules, the high school and middle school plan to open in Phase 2. Elementary schools will start the school year in Phase 3 with four days of in-person instruction. Phase 4 calls for a regular five-day school week.

“Adjacent school districts are going back full time. They’ve assessed the risk differently,” parent Josh Stenz told the School Board. “But what we want to know is what is our school district looking at in terms of going back five days a week. What is the measure? What is the metric?”

School Board member Aaron Paulin echoed those questions.

“How do we get kids back to normal?” he asked. “How do we get them back to school five days a week?”

Supt. Michael Weber said administrators have been waiting for guidance from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, but unwilling to idle any longer they began this week drafting criteria for a return to full-time, in-person instruction. The district will ask the Washington Ozaukee Public Health Department to review that criteria, he said.

The district is clearly committed to a part-time return to classes to start the school year, but with a continuing surge of Covid-19 cases in Ozaukee County, Weber would not rule out a step back to Phase 1 — the closing of schools and a return to online-only instruction — before or after the beginning of classes on Sept. 1.

“We are concerned and watching very closely the trajectory (of Covid-19 cases),” he said during an interview. “We’ve never been here before, so we’re not certain what this means for our students.”

Ozaukee County is categorized as high risk for Covid-19 infections and its trajectory of cases is increasing, according to the Washington Ozaukee Public Health Department, which announced last week that it had traced outbreaks of the coronavirus to several gatherings, including graduation parties.

“We are hopeful we can begin school in September so we can develop those important relationships between teachers and students before we have to go all virtual, if we have to go all virtual,” Weber said.

Key to avoiding another shutdown is keeping students and staff members who have, or have been exposed to someone who has, Covid-19 out of schools, which is the subject of a complex protocol included in the re-entry plan.

A student or staff member who has been in close contact with someone who has tested positive for Covid-19, for instance, must quarantine outside of school for at least 14 days as long as the person they had contact with does not reside in the same home.

If they live with the person who is Covid-19 positive, they must quarantine for at least 24 days. 

The quarantine period is extended if symptoms develop. 

Close contact is defined as being within six feet of someone for a cumulative 15 minutes per day. 

“That will be quite a challenge to monitor,” Director of Special Services Duane Woelfel said. 

Tracking contacts in schools will also be a challenge. The district expects parents of children who test positive or the health department to inform the district. A list of students and staff members who have had close contact with a Covid-19-positive person will be developed and the contact tracer will send a list of those people, who must quarantine, to the district nurse and principals. The district will also provide the health department with pertinent information. 

Even students and staff members who test negative for Covid-19 but have symptoms of other illnesses are to stay home until they are symptom free for 72 hours. 

“If there is a resurgence (of the coronavirus) in fall or winter, it may coincide with the cold and flu season,” Woelfel said. “We’re just asking people to stay home. That’s pretty similar to what we do anyway.”

Avoiding close contact among students and staff members is the district’s goal and why social distancing in school is critical, administrators said. Schools plan to cordon off all gathering areas and direct students straight to their classrooms at the start of the school day and immediately out of school buildings at the end of the day through multiple entrances and exits. 

At the high school, both the upper and lower cafeterias, as well as an area adjacent to the new gym, will be used to serve lunch. 

The middle school cafeteria is large enough to allow for social distancing, but at elementary schools students will be spread out in cafeterias, gyms and classrooms for lunch. 

On school buses, students will sit one to a seat unless they are with siblings. Students and drivers must wear masks.

Field trips and assemblies are suspended indefinitely. 

Although the district’s re-entry plan is a strategy for returning students to classrooms, it is also an effort to improve online education, which will remain a regular part of the school week as long as students are in school buildings part time. Online teaching will also play an important role in continuing the education of students who are quarantined at home as well as all students if school buildings are closed like they were in spring. 

Referring to online-only learning in spring, Paulin said, “I think the feedback was that online learning did not meet the needs of students.”

To improve it, the district has streamlined the number of programs that will be used to teach online and invested in new technology. The Chromebooks assigned to all students in fifth through 12th grade will be replaced with new ones, efforts will be made to get older Chromebooks and iPads into the hands of younger students and the district has spent $224,000 to purchase 224 new laptop computers to replace the Chromebooks teachers currently use. 

But when asked if teachers will have the ability to live-stream classes, Director of Business Services Jim Froemming said that the cameras that teachers need to do that most effectively are in short supply. He said the new laptops may give teachers some ability to live-stream classes. 

The district is also working to “formalize” online education so that it more resembles the classroom experience, although it is unclear what that will mean. 

In spring, online education was a mix of video lessons students could watch when they wanted and related assignments, email communication with teachers and real-time interaction via Zoom and other similar platforms. 

This year, daily attendance is required for online learning, and students are prohibited from obtaining a job that requires them to work during educational hours unless it involves a school-approved apprenticeship or co-op.

Parents who do not want their children to return to classrooms have the option of enrolling them in online-only courses, but those classes will not be taught by the school district. Instead, the district will out-source online instruction for students who do not want to return to the classroom to CESA 6, an educational consortium, for grades six through 12 and the Wisconsin eSchool Network for students in kindergarten through fifth grade. 

Noting this is “one of the most unique school years in American history,” Port High social studies teacher and Port Washington-Saukville Educators Association representative Brian Borley praised the district for relying on health experts and scientific data in drafting its reopening plan.

“Please note you have the deepest level of respect from PWSEA members,” he said.