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Neillsville District Administrator Discusses Proposed Reopening Plan for the District for the New School Year

Friday, July 24th, 2020 -- 3:11 PM

-The Neillsville School Board discussed the district’s proposed reopening plan for the new school year.

I spoke with District Administrator John Gaier and he explained what the proposed plan is.

Mr. Gaier: “The reopening plan that was proposed was proposed by a task force that we put together to look at all of the data and work with a number of different agencies, gathering information on what would be a safe way to reopen school. The current reopening proposed plan, and it’s important for people to know that this plan is simply proposed at this time, is to have grades 5K-6th come Monday-Thursday all day; to have 4-year-old kindergarten broken into two cohorts, a Monday/Wednesday cohort and a Tuesday/Thursday cohort, and they would go all day, which would be different then what we’ve had in the past for our 4-year-old kindergarteners on those alternate days. For both of those groups, Friday would be off to do some in-home learning practices, but we certainly wouldn’t expect them to be doing an entire day of school work on those days. And we would also be working with our staff on professional development items and also planning, because planning is going to be important for our staff because we will still continue to have some kids that do remote things and other kids that are doing things in school, so that planning for them is going to be important. And, we are also establishing plans in the event that we are closed down again. So, there are plans in place for that.”

“For our grades 7-12, the proposed plan is that we would break those groups into two. One would be a Monday/Wednesday and the other would be Tuesday/Thursday with Fridays off to do some in-home practice of things they’ve already learned and also, again, for teacher planning and professional development. And also, that allows us to do deep cleaning on that Friday and then we would have 72 hours out of the building for any virus that might be on a surface to dissipate or be disinfected.”

“So, that was the plan moving forward. Another part of that plan was that we would mandate masks in the building. We know that will not be a perfect plan as far as it’s going to be followed by every student, every minute of the day. We know that masks are going to go up and down in cases. But, we do also know, that being masked at least most of the time is better than not being masked based on all the information that we’re gathering. The other thing that’s important, that a lot of people are questioning, is who is going to purchase the mask? All of the masks will be purchased and provided by the district for both staff and students. If students, or staff, have a medical reason that they cannot wear masks, we’ll also be providing face shields for students and staff in those areas. We also want teachers, especially of our youngest kids, to be wearing face shields, so that kids can see the expressions on their face, because that becomes very important, I think, for kids of a younger age. And, again, remember that this is simply a proposed plan at this time.”

“The school board is actually looking now at moving their meeting to August 3rd, which would be a week from Monday, which would allow us to make a final decision on a plan, either this one or some other plan, on August 3rd, so that we can inform parents far enough in advance, so that any plans that needed to be made could be made for them.”

“The other thing that, I think, is important to understand and know is that if families are not comfortable coming back to the building to start on September 1st, we will be providing a full time remote learning opportunity for them. It may be online or it may be a live broadcast from the classrooms for those kids. That would also be recorded, so that kids could be a part of that class and still have that availability to be home and stay home based on their families desires. Those are all important things that, I think, people need to know.”

“And I can tell you that we've had a lot of questions about what will meals look like; what will the sanitation of the building look like? We are following all of the safety protocols that we possibly can to make sure all of those things are being met and that our ultimate goal is to limit any potential spread of the virus, knowing that we can’t completely eliminate it, but we can do things that will limit it.”

“But the other goals, I think, and I think it’s important for people to know is, we want kids to be back in the building. We know how important that is for families, we know how important that is for learning, but we also want to do it in a safe enough manner that we guarantee that we don’t ever have to fully close again because we know how detrimental that is to learning. We know what kind of stresses that puts on families. So, our ultimate goal are those two things, to make sure we can get kids back in the building and to make sure that we don’t ever have to close again.”

Riley: “One thing that I wanted to ask about is temperature checks? Is there any talks of the district doing temperature checks?

Mr. Gaier: “That is a great question. What we plan on doing is providing a self assessment for students and staff. So, what we’re looking at having them do is, parents, before you send your kids to school or send them to the bus stop, there will be a checklist of things that you need to go through and if the answer to all of those questions are no, then the kids are free to come to school. If any symptoms appear or they think they have been exposed to COVID-19, then they need to stay home. And that is true of both staff and of students. So, I think it is almost impossible to think that we are going to be able to check every student and staff member that comes into the building. We are going to try and rely on the self-reliance of parents and staff to check those things daily and be honest about the results of that check.”

Riley: “Switching gears, at Monday’s board meeting, it was decided 4 people could attend for each graduating senior at their ceremony on July 31st. Could you explain how next Friday’s ceremony is going to work?

Mr. Gaier: “Number one, it’s going to be outdoors on the football field, which will be the first time. I believe this will be the start of my 36th year here and we’ve never had an outside graduation in all the years that I’ve been here, so this will be new for all of us. So, we’re all hoping the weather cooperates, knowing that August 1st would be the rain date then. The afternoon of August 1st if we needed it.”

“What we will do is have the graduates gather in the elementary playground area to get ready. They will come in through the gate on the east side of the building. Each person coming to attend to watch will need to present a ticket to us. The reason that we had to do that, obviously, was to control the numbers, so that we could make sure that social distancing could be met. We are going to strongly recommend for people to wear masks, if they will, and then we are going to have marked spaces on the bleachers for the parents to sit. The students will be down on the field. We will have a temporary stage built down on the track, so as kids come across, they will be able to get their diploma and be recognized for getting that.”

“We still will have speeches by the high school principal and two of our students, so that will go on. We will not have live music, but there will be some canned music that we will be using for the ceremony, but we want to make sure that our kids get recognized for their achievement because this class of 2020 has had to sacrifice a lot and they’re just a wonderful group of kids that deserve to be recognized. We apologize for having to limit the number of people that can attend. But, it’s important to know, I think, that it will be live streamed on our website. And it will be recorded and left on our website, so anybody that wants to view that graduation ceremony can certainly do that.”

Riley: “I think another thing that we should stress is patience. The coronavirus situation is always changing and it can be a stressful situation, so patience is important. Would you agree with that?”

Mr. Gaier: “Absolutely! I think patience and understanding are two things that are going to be really important. The other thing is going to be community and parent attitude. If we take the attitude that masking is impossible and that we shouldn’t try and do it at all, that’s going to develop an attitude in the kids. If we take the attitude of ‘hey, we’re going to do the best that we can,’ regarding masking because we know that reduces the spread of the coronavirus and potentially allows us to stay in school without ever having to close down again, we will just be promoting, again, that idea of doing the best you can with that. I think those things are going to be vital to our success.”

“The other thing that’s going to be vital to our success is really considering that check list of symptoms or traveling each day with the students before they come to school and parents being willing to keep their kids home if they are showing any symptoms to reduce the potential of any kind of spread. So, all of those things, patience and understanding and our positive attitudes of how we can get this done, I think those are going to be vital to the success of our reopening.”

Riley: “Do you have anything else?”

Mr. Gaier: “Yes, I do have one other thing. The WIAA just had a meeting on Thursday and their Board of Control decided to push back the start of football and volleyball season to September 7th, which means they could not start competing until a week or two even after that, but practice would start on September 7th. I think the ultimate goal of that was to buy time to see how the trend in the spread of coronavirus was occurring at that time. I think at that time, just prior to September 7th, they will have to make a final decision of yes, we’re going to go with this in the fall and see if we can make this work with a reduced number of games or matches. Or, do we have to think about going to a different plan. And I know a different plan that has been proposed is moving the fall sports to next spring and next year’s spring sports to next summer to buy more time and give kids the change to compete in the sports they love. I think the decisions of the WIAA will also impact what reopening of schools will look like or the ability to maintain the ability of schools to stay open without ever having to close again.”

Riley: “Anything more?”

Mr. Gaier: “I appreciate the coverage and please, again, anybody that has any questions, don’t ever hesitate to give me a call up here and we are more than happy to answer any questions that we have. Also, a reminder to the parents of our kids, we do have a survey out there that will be available until July 31st, so their views on the survey are very important to us and we look forward to hearing from them.”

Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.