Parents call for cautious return to classrooms

Parents told the Port Washington-Saukville School Board Monday that they want their children to return to classrooms in September but not necessarily full time, instead advocating a mix of in-person and online learning designed to protect students and teachers from the coronavirus and stave off another shutdown of schools while providing some semblance of a traditional education.

Referring to a combination of classroom and online instruction, Melissa Niemeyer, one of 20 parents who attended the meeting and three who spoke, told school officials, “I think it’s a good idea. This virus is not going away. I think we have to address that fact and get back to school for the benefit of students and parents.”

Tracy Modjeski, whose two sons attend Port Washington High School, said, “I would love to have my kids go back to face-to-face learning, but what that looks like is up to people who are smarter than me.”

The comments come as administrators grapple with the complex question facing  districts throughout the county — how to reopen and keep schools open amid an ongoing and, in many places, worsening pandemic.

Port Washington-Saukville School District administrators, who plan to present their reopening plan to the School Board on either July 20 or July 27, are relying on guidance from county, state and national health officials as well as a recent survey of parents.

“Most people surveyed want students to be able to go back into classrooms on a limited basis with proper safety measures in place,” Supt. Michael Weber said. “One thing that is certain is that our goal is to provide as much personal instruction as possible as safety as possible, and it will take some creative thinking to do that.”

Only 3% to 4% of survey respondents indicated they would keep their children home because of Covid-19 concerns, Weber said. 

With 2,100 responses to the survey in a district of 2,600 students, school officials consider it to be a representative sampling of parents and guardians and are clearly giving it weight as they reinvent how students are educated during a pandemic

Central to the process of reopening schools is a plan that keeps students physically distanced, ensures adequate time, products and people to regularly disinfect buildings and mandates the wearing of masks at least at times in schools. 

Added to the list of school supplies students need that typically includes tissues and hand wipes for this school year are masks, Weber said, adding that the district expects a shipment of 5,000 masks from the state before the beginning of the school year.

Teachers, whose input is another key consideration in the reopening plan, favor the wearing of masks by educators and students, Weber said. But with the understanding that people need a break from masks during the course of an eight-hour school day, the district is relying on expert advice to determine when it is most important to wear them, he said. 

Christina Olson, a Port Washington resident and teacher in Mequon, told the board she favors the wearing of masks in schools, and that rather than a recommendation, it should be a rule.

“If it’s left up to students and not mandated, I feel they will succumb to peer pressure and all of a sudden we’ll be out of school again,” she said.

The district will also need to revisit how it deals with students and teachers who appear to be sick. Niemeyer and Modjeski called on the board to adopt a strict policy that ensures students and teachers who have symptoms of illness are not in school and are given adequate time to recover or quarantine at home.

Gone are the days, Modjeski said, of giving your child fever relief medication and sending them to school.

“I think our schools need a very strong sick policy, stronger than it is now,” Niemeyer said. 

Nathan Ugoretz, a Port High social studies teacher and chairman of the Port Washington-Saukville Education Association Advocacy Committee, told the board that teachers want to return to schools but in a way that protects them and their students from a virus that has been proven deadly and gives the district the best chance of avoiding another disruptive shutdown. Safety measures, he said, are a “small cost to pay to prevent needless deaths in our community.”

Weber noted that administrators are working closely with the Washington Ozaukee Public Health Department and told parents Monday that the district will “purchase whatever we need to make sure our kids are safe.”

Without money in the budget to do that, the district plans to tap its fund balance to purchase everything from cleaning supplies to additional masks, Weber said, adding that hand sanitizer dispensers are being installed in every classroom as part of a renewed focus on hygiene.

Also factoring into the district’s plan are recommendations from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction that include four school reopening scenarios, none of which call for a traditional, five-day school week. 

The most optimistic of the scenarios recommended by DPI calls for all students to attend classes four days a week.

Another option is to have half of a district’s students attend classes on Mondays and Tuesdays and the other half on Thursdays and Fridays.

Under a third scenario, half the students would attend classes for four days one week while the other half would be in school the following week.

All those scenarios envision schools being closed on Wednesdays so they can be sanitized and for students to be engaged in online learning when not in school. 

A fourth option suggested by DPI is to have elementary school students return to classes early and be disbursed throughout all buildings in the district. Middle and high school students would remain at home and take classes online. 

“I don’t think that is a viable option,” Weber said last month when the DPI recommendations were made.

The district’s reopening plan will also reflect the realization that online learning is here to stay as long as the pandemic continues. It will be offered to students whose parents don’t want them to return to classrooms, be used as a way to educate students who must stay at home because they are sick and would be a key component of education under a reopening scenario in which students are in classrooms for only a few days a week. Students will receive instruction five days a week, whether it’s in-person, online or a combination of both, administrators said.

To improve online learning, the district has streamlined the number of computer applications being used by teachers and students. When schools were shut down in March, several makers of educational applications offered their products for free, and while that gave teachers the opportunity to test a variety of programs, it confused parents who struggled to familiarize themselves with several different platforms, administrators said.

The district also plans to structure its online instruction so it more closely resembles a day at school. During the shutdown, online schoolwork resembled homework in many cases. Students could watch recorded lectures and turn in assignments anytime during the day or week, and parents struggled to help their children set daily routines.

“To help parents, we want to provide a structured schedule of some sort for their children,” Weber said. “So, for instance, geometry may meet online at 9 in the morning.”

A clear plan that provides structure is what parents need, Modjeski said.

“When school shut down, a lot of families struggled with things like finding child care,” she said. “That was no one’s fault, but now we have to give families more predictability.”