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Schools prepare for return to school

Posted Monday, August 3, 2020 3:37 pm

Plans continue to evolve for start of year

Adjustments are being made at schools as return to learn plans continue to change and reflect the state’s requirements.

Galena schools are now in the process of having the plan put in place at each individual school and having the grade levels work on what the plan will look like when put into action.

“Lunch looks very different from the primary school than it does in high school,” said Superintendent Tim Vincent. “Logistics are being planned at each building level.”

Vincent is also working on scheduling professional development and ways to adjust the remote plan in case the district were to need to implement that.

“There are increased expectations from the state,” said Vincent. “Namely academic expectations that will be the same for remote learners as it will be for on-site learners. Grading will be back to traditional grading. Those are the two major differences in what remote learning looks like now compared to the spring.”

Vincent said that over the next two weeks staff are signing up for virtual workshops throughout the state to prepare for the upcoming school year and the changes.

Schools are also busy cleaning and disinfecting every space in the school buildings to prepare.

“We will have to put down tape on different alleys. That way students are going different directions,” said Warren Superintendent Shawn Teske. “We will also have other signage to promote social distance.”

Teske said teachers are working with one another at Warren to prepare and staff have been coming in more regularly to restructure their classrooms and prepare for the changes.

Vincent is also paying attention to statistics and reading articles on the virus to keep in front of problems that might arise.

“We are now at the point where buildings are taking the plan and running with it,” said Vincent.

Once schedules are put into place, East Dubuque Superintendent TJ Potts plans to meet with East Dubuque parents to talk to them about what the school day will look like and what to expect.

One thing that will be a challenge is that the school won’t be able to accommodate as much as they had in the past with after-school care or other services.

“We aren’t going to have as much flexibility to say that we can work with them on this,” said Potts. “We don’t have that ability to do that. There is going to have to be more give and take than in the past to make it work. It is not us being flexible. It is us doing everything we can so that we can be in school. The alternative is to throw up our hands and say that we are going remote.”

“It has been challenging to work through and it will continue to be, but this is the hand we were dealt,” said Vincent. “I feel confident in the plan that we have and that it is the best that we could do given the situation.”

Teske said that even though their focus is on COVID, the district also has to be prepared for the other aspects for the start of the school year as they would in a typical school year.

“There is a lot in the normal part of the school year that we can’t neglect,” said Teske. “We are still doing all of those things on top of what COVID presented.”

County superintendents have been meeting weekly to be on the same page and to also get different ideas on how to address concerns.

“In the spring, we went into it with the mindset that if we can be as similar as possible, there can be strength in numbers,” said Potts. “We have a really collegial group and we all enjoy working with each other.”

Everyone is working on the future and what could come up at every turn along the way.

Potts said staff members at East Dubuque have already begun talking about boots and how they can have students put them in lockers, if they aren’t supposed to be using lockers.

Potts said that he isn’t worried about boots at this point, but said when the district can start worrying about boots that will be a good problem to have because that meant that they made it through the semester.

“My message is let’s live through September before we worry about December,” said Potts. “I think that helps us see that it is an evolving thing that might need to be adjusted when kids come back.”

by Brandon Behlke

bbehlke@galgazette.com

GALENA–Area school districts are keeping options open when it comes to the school year and each district has taken steps to develop a plan that best fits their situations.

Each district in the area has approved their initial plan, but as new recommendations come from the state, these plans remain fluid.

Galena, East Dubuque, Warren, Scales Mound, Stockton and River Ridge have each given parents the option of either in-person or remote learning with each district having different responses to those options. East Dubuque has seen about 15 percent of their respondents request remote learning, while Warren has seen about 30 percent.

The journey to get to these plans has been arduous with some beginning to have conversations as early as last spring, but as more guidelines were released many were forced to return to the drawing board and reimagine what school in the age of a pandemic would look like.

“The initial guidelines came out from the state and within a week, three more variations of the guidance have come out,” said Tim Vincent, Galena School District superintendent. “There are certain aspects that are semi-ambiguous, so we are trying to figure that out.”

“We went through the different phases and we started to realize that we might be able to have school again but that it is going to look different,” said TJ Potts, superintendent at East Dubuque. “We re-surveyed parents and there was an overwhelming number that wanted on-site learning.”

Potts also clarified to parents the difference between home schooling and remote learning and re-surveyed staff.

“We took the guidelines from the state: wearing masks, social distancing and cleaning the rooms and started with the idea that our youngest students and special needs students where we need to have the most face-to-face time and split the K-2 classrooms into smaller groups,” said Potts. “We thought we might be able to do that same plan with everybody. We got out the map and started figuring out space in our buildings and figured out we really could do this.”

East Dubuque will be having teachers switch between rooms instead of having students transition between rooms.

Scales Mound began planning after the state released its guidance on June 23 and their planning is based around that guidance.

“The guidance was based around musts and things you can do to the best of your abilities,” said Dr. Bill Caron, superintendent at Scales Mound. “All of the musts we followed, must wear face covering, must not have more than 50 people in a room. We started asking questions and are in constant contact with superintendents throughout the county and state to make sure we are all understanding it the same way.”

Galena and other school districts are working out ways in which they can keep hallways and other areas, including lunches and passing periods, to numbers under the requirements while wearing masks and keeping an appropriate distance.

“We understand that people are at all areas of the spectrum when it comes to this and we need to respond to those that have compromised immune systems, those that are afraid to come back or comfortable coming back,” said Vincent. “That is why we decided to come back five days but also offer that remote option. We are weighing these competing options and trying to meet the parents where they are.”

Vincent said that the district has met with individual groups throughout the district to come up with a plan and to ask parents to select an option with the information provided.

East Dubuque is beginning to put together class lists once all results are in on parents in-person or remote.

“We have been meeting with groups of teachers pretty constantly,” said Potts. “The more we talk, the more the bigger pieces are figured out and we are getting into the smaller details, such as starting to worry about how long we need to quarantine a book. I didn’t think we would be to that point yet.”

Many other districts took a team approach to get as many involved in the plan as they could.

Scales Mound has met with groups of teachers, as well as a facilities group, to work through the plan and see how they can adjust based on grade levels.

“In those groups, we looked at the guidance, we looked at what we can do for the kids and went into rooms and physically moved desks around to see if we can fit all the kids in them,” said Caron. “We then created the plan for in-person learning and remote learning.”

“There was so much work going on behind the scenes,” said Dr. Shawn Teske, superintendent at Warren. “Every hour I was awake and many of the staff members, we were working towards the plan.”

Leading up to the plan, Warren sent a remote learning survey to families, as well as staff.

“We put those surveys out there and collected the information,” said Teske. “We took all the information provided and started a transition team.”

Warren had 12-15 staff members at each meeting, ranging from teachers, paraprofessionals and administration.

“We sent out another survey to teachers to see how they felt, and also put out a more in-depth questionnaire to figure out how many are remote learning,” said Teske.

Teske also had to scale back teaching methods that were being aimed toward group work and facilitation and had to shift back to more lecture-based learning and technology due to the remote learning aspect.

Vincent said at Galena 18 percent are choosing full remote learning, 12 percent a hybrid option and the rest are choosing to return to school.

“We are taking those numbers and seeing how many are physically in class and adjusting rosters where necessary,” said Vincent. “For students and staff that are at school, we have to make them as safe as possible, so if that takes some readjustments, that is what we are going to do.”

Schools have ordered a large number of supplies to prepare for the students to return: sanitation sprayers, disinfectant wipes, hand sanitizing stations and other supplies.

Teske has purchased lanyards for students to allow students to have masks stay with them when they take them off outside on breaks.

“There are a lot of supplies and planning that goes into that, so we are trying to allocate resources into that so people here are safe,” said Vincent.

Warren and Stockton both opted to have students dismissed early each day and to give students a grab-and-go lunch to limit the exposure that could come with large crowds.