What We Have Learned: Operating Schools During a Pandemic

Rick Waski, District Administrator, School District of Monroe

The COVID 19 pandemic has been an experience that has impacted all of our lives in varied and personal ways. Not only has it affected people’s health, but it has also changed aspects of our lives in ways that as little as a year ago we would have had trouble imagining. Regardless of how much of a threat people feel COVID 19 really is, we can all agree that its impact on our lives has been substantial and will likely be far reaching for years to come.

During the spring and summer of 2020, our district began planning for a school year where we would have local control regarding the level to which our schools are open for in-person instruction, rather than that being determined at a state level. We worked tirelessly to develop plans that we hoped would allow us as much face-to-face instruction as possible while attempting to protect the health of our students, staff, and community.

During the first three months of school, we have learned a great deal. We have affirmed that we made some really good planning decisions, at the same time, there are some scenarios that have played out that we didn’t anticipate. Here are some of our takeaways from the first three months of school:

There is no winning formula - As many of you may know, the district has three operational phases and families are also able to choose entirely virtual programming. As the individual the Board has designated to make the weekly decisions regarding our operational status, I quickly learned that people are so polarized on how serious COVID 19 is (or is not) that it is hard to find a middle ground that satisfies a majority of our parents. It became apparent to me by the start of October that we need to place our highest priority in the decision-making process on the COVID 19 activity ‘in our schools’ as we have found that it does not necessarily match the activity levels in our community or the state. This has seemed to help us operate in Plan B (half capacity) as much as possible, yet has allowed us to be responsive to the health and safety conditions in our schools.

Hybrid does help - While I will be the first to acknowledge that hybrid instruction (teaching students virtually and in-person at the same time) is exhausting for teachers, it does help us keep our schools “open”. There have been many occurrences this year where a student tested positive and began showing symptoms when they were in their virtual week, while the district was in Plan B. What this means is that we saved many students and staff from being exposed to the virus and we were able to keep students present for face-to-face instruction that would have otherwise been quarantined. Additionally, we cannot keep 6-feet of physical distance between students and staff when we operate at full capacity. We are committed to returning to full capacity when we are at medium or low COVID 19 activity levels in the county and our case numbers in school are low, however, until we get there, hybrid does allow us to see our students, address their socioemotional needs, and check in on their physical and mental health.

It’s the quarantines, not positive cases, that shut us down - I like many others, was under the false impression that once we had a case or two of COVID 19 in our schools that the transmission of the virus would quickly shut us down and the number of active cases among students and staff would skyrocket. That has not been the case. At the time this article was written, only 7% of the cases of COVID 19 we have had in schools were from transmission in the schools (3 people) and the rest of the cases resulted from spread outside of the schools. This suggests two things.

First of all, it indicates that the preventative measures we are employing are working. Secondly, it admittedly suggests that student-to-student or student-to-staff transmission can be mitigated to the point where face-to-face instruction can occur. When we have had to go to Plan C, it has been because we have had to quarantine a number of staff for 14 days so that we have not been able to staff our building.

In previous years, we could usually come up with the 30 to 35 substitute teachers we needed district-wide to cover 200 full-time teachers. This year, many of our substitutes have chosen not to work or have taken other jobs and that number has been reduced to about 15 people district-wide. In the 8 Plan changes we have had in the district, from the first day of school until this article was written, 7 of them were because of staffing, not public health conditions.

There is a long year ahead and I believe that COVID 19 will also have an impact on the 21-22 school year in ways that we have not yet experienced. It is my goal to make responsible decisions based on the data that we have, and for our district be as effective as possible in communicating with our parents and community. There are so many things that we, as a community, love about our schools that are absent or substantially altered during the 20-21 school year. At the same time, I am proud of the flexibility of our students and families, the heroic efforts of our staff, and support of our Board of Education in allowing us to simply do the best we can while working through something we have never dealt with on this large of a scale before.

I wish you, health and happiness this Holiday season and GO CHEESEMAKERS!!