School district in severe risk category

By Bert Lehman

The Clintonville School District moved to all virtual learning starting Tuesday, Oct. 6.

A special school board meeting was scheduled on Oct. 2 with only a couple hours of notice to the public so the board could review the decision to have the district move to the severe-risk category regarding COVID-19.

Under the severe-risk category, the district must require virtual learning for all students.

Clintonville Superintendent David Dyb said school was cancelled for students on Oct. 5 in order to allow teachers time to plan for all virtual learning to start on Oct. 6.

Dyb told the Clintonville Tribune-Gazette that the district is working on additional student WiFi access.

Sept. 28 meeting

When the board met Sept. 28, Dyb proposed changes to the severe-risk category guidelines.

Dyb said he’d like to “lessen the reigns a little bit” if the district had to enter the severe-risk category in regard to COVID-19.

He said previously under severe risk, the district did not want to have anybody in the district’s buildings. This meant no students or instructional staff would be allowed in the district’s buildings. Only custodial or staff critical to the district’s operations would be allowed in the buildings.

“We’re going to say, ‘All staff will report unless on self-quarantine at home or for FFSCRA reasons,’” Dyb said.

The Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFSCRA) allows employees up to 80 hours of emergency paid sick leave and 12 weeks of family medical leave to care for a child whose school is closed due to COVID-19.

Dyb told the board that he’d like to make a change to the severe-risk guidelines that would allow instructional staff to report to district buildings so they could teach virtually from their classrooms. This would allow teachers to have resources in their classrooms to help them teach.

He said another change he’d like to see made would be all five days of the week would be learning days if the district went to entirely virtual learning.

Another recommended change would be to change from no visitors in the buildings during severe risk, to visitors would not be allowed without administrative permission. All district employees would also have to self-screen.

At the time of the Sept. 28 board meeting, there were three positive COVID-19 cases in the Clintonville School District, Dyb said.

Staff exposure

“The last positive case in the district knocked out 10 staff members through the minimum of Oct. 6. They have to self-quarantine. They had exposure,” Dyb said.

He added, “Today (Sept. 28) we had 20 staff out. We were within a thread of me having to call a snow day.”

At the Sept. 28 meeting, the district’s plan was to stay in the high-risk category.

Dyb told the board that the district’s medical advisor recommended the district switch to all virtual learning. He added that the Waupaca County health officer said the district needed to make decisions about how it will conduct learning.

If teachers are teaching remotely, they must be available from 7:30 a.m. to 3:45 p.m., Dyb told the board.

“If you cannot do that, then we’re not going to allow you to teach virtually from home,” Dyb said. “You have to be distraction free.”

He added, “We’re not going back to what we did last spring where we said you only have to be on the clock for a portion of the day and we had some people going all day long and some people doing shorter periods. We’ve learned from that experience. You learn and you grow, that’s what this is all about.”

Those changes were approved by the board.