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Manawa students heading back

In-person learning starts Jan. 26

By Greg Seubert

A plan is in place for School District of Manawa students to return to in-person learning five days a week.

The change – affecting Manawa Elementary School, Manawa Middle School and Little Wolf High School – will go in effect Tuesday, Jan. 26, and coincide with the start of the second semester of the 2020-21 school year.

The Manawa School Board approved the change Jan. 18 on a 6-0 vote, with board member Bobbi Jo Pethke absent.

Administrators presented the board with the second phase of a school reopening plan that called for students that are failing to thrive and with exceptional needs to return to in-person learning Jan. 26. The plan also called for all students to return to in-person learning five days a week, but left that date to be determined.

“What the principals have been working on to date is taking a look at students who have experienced a failure to thrive and that could be for a number of reasons,” District Administrator Melanie Oppor said. “In some instances, virtual instruction just doesn’t provide the personal connection that some students need to learn. For some, virtual instruction doesn’t work very well due to a weakness in our world broadband environment. The technology itself isn’t always effective for some of the learners.

“In other instances, it’s been an attendance issue,” she said. “Students haven’t been online regularly participating in the instruction. All of these can contribute to students struggling in the learning environment.”

Oppor said administrators looked at four performance indicators: engagement and satisfaction; operation efficiencies; safe and orderly environment; and learning.

“The purpose is to plan for the return of all students to in-person instruction with the greatest impact in this case being the high school students, who are currently in A-B cohorts on opposite days of the week,” she said. “Right now, we have two classrooms that are quarantined and learning virtually and a variety of other staff and/or students and one athletic team that are quarantined as well.”

Several board members indicated an interest in bringing all students back Jan. 26.

“We’d like to have that conversation with the board based on Waupaca County Department of Health recommendations,” Oppor said. “No date has been set, so that’s among the questions for the board tonight. Do you want to set a firm date or do you want to set a set of criteria that need to be met by the district in order to set the date?”

Oppor said it makes sense to return to in-person learning at the start of a new semester.

“The only reason (Waupaca County Health Officer Jed Wohlt) suggested we may want to hold on that for a week or two is we do have I believe one class quarantined that won’t be eligible to return until after that date,” she said. “Their return date is either the 27th or the 28th. He was concerned there might be more incidents of spread.”

“What about these districts around us that are all open?” board member Russ Johnson asked.

“Their numbers have dropped dramatically and have stayed down,” Oppor said. “Clintonville’s working toward five days a week and they’re at four days a week currently. New London’s board voted on five days a week last Monday and they started last Thursday. Wild Rose has been in-person all school year and has been quite successful using their mitigation strategies. Marion started five days a week last Monday. Waupaca’s doing a phased-in model bringing people back in three groups. Weyauwega-Fremont started last Monday. None of them had the large quarantine numbers that we had. Ours happened rather sudden, all within a few days’ time.”

“Can we make a change to bring everybody back on the 26th?” board member Luke Seeger asked. “I would say most of the schools that are the same size as us on the list are basically back. I don’t see any reason why we can’t be.”

“The only reason we were cautioned is because we had a high incident rate and none of them do,” Oppor said.

Johnson said he received several telephone calls and emails from students and other district residents in favor of returning to in-person learning.

“Several students that emailed me are begging to come back to school because they said they need it,” he said.

“Some of the people I talked to said they definitely want it because their kids learn better when they’re at school,” board member Bruce Scheller said.

Failure to thrive

Not all students will excel through virtual learning, Oppor told the board.

“The failure to thrive is a significant problem not just in our community,” she said. “We’ve noticed it across the state, even nationally. It does not work for all learners. There are some students who are doing extremely well with virtual instruction. They tend to be extremely organized, very self-directed, very disciplined in their nature. Many young people just developmentally are not ready for that at this time. It’s not for everyone.”

Parents are aware of how their children are doing with attendance and learning, according to Oppor.

“We’re asking that parents that wish to have their students continue to participate in virtual instruction first have to meet the criteria for being successful in that environment and to sign a second-semester commitment to continue virtual instruction,” she said. “That would be an agreement between the student, their parents and the principal of their school.”

“The students at the elementary level that are doing well virtually have a high level of parent or at least adult engagement in their education,” Manawa Elementary School Principal Danni Brauer said. “The younger the grades, the more the adults are sitting next to the child all day long and helping them through.

“We didn’t have a large number of virtual (students),” she said. “At least half have come back on their own in the last two weeks. They were intending just a couple days a week, but after the first or second day back, I got a phone call saying that they wanted to be back five days because the students needed it, the parents needed it also.”

“The biggest changes at the elementary level would be classroom cohorts would return to art class in the art room and music class in the music room,” Oppor said. “There are some real distinct advantages to those programs being able to be held in their own classrooms. The key there continues to be always sanitizing and disinfecting in between cohort usage. Teachers will allow for cleaning to take place.”

Face coverings will still be required once students return to school even after the coronavirus vaccination process begins for local residents.

“A fully vaccinated person could still continue to be a carrier of the virus and therefore could spread it to others,” Oppor said. “We’re still waiting for more studies to be completed. Early indications would seem to indicate that you can still be an active carrier.”

In-person learning will give students a chance to build relationships with teachers and other students, Oppor said.

“A lot of learning is based on relationships first,” Oppor said. “Teachers build a community in their classroom and that’s more difficult to do in a virtual environment. We’ve seen it with coaches in sporting events. Kids will do amazing things for people they have a relationship with.

“I know they miss their friends, too,” she added. “For kids, there’s nothing that beats being face-to-face with their teachers, with their classmates, to be able to have discussions and work on projects, those hands-on activities that we know provide the best kind of learning opportunities for our students.”

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