School board to revisit topic
By Bert Lehman
The Clintonville School Board voted against an attempt to return students to in-person learning five days a week at its Jan. 11 meeting.
The motion to return students to classrooms five days a week, beginning Jan. 25, was defeated by a 3-4 vote.
Those voting in favor of the motion included Board President Lori Poppe and board members Mark Zachow and Laurie Vollrath.
Prior to the vote, Superintendent David Dyb recommended the board wait until Jan. 25 to make any adjustments to its current learning model, which consists of four days of in-person learning per week.
The middle and high school students returned to four-day in-person learning on Jan. 11.
Dyb said the district still has a significant number of students who have elected to be taught by all virtual means.
“We don’t have an alternative format like some other schools have, and I’m not a fan of shortening the day, the instructional day for all students, just to give end of the day time for teachers to contact the all-virtual kids,” Dyb said.
He added that teachers need Wednesday of each week to plan instruction for the students who are doing virtual learning, and to reach out to those students and connect with them.
Board member Jim Schultz said he would like to see the administrators develop a plan by the next board meeting, as to how deal with virtual students if the district moves to five days of in-person learning each week.
“We have less students than we had at the beginning of the year,” Schultz said. “We hired teachers to teach those students. We have them scattered in various grades, 100% virtual and 100% not, but we should have the staff to teach this number of students one way or the other.”
He added, “I would like to see us back to five days (of in-person learning), I just want to make sure it would work.”
Dyb provided the board with a breakdown of the number of students who have elected for all virtual learning: 46 students at Rexford Longfellow Elementary School, 27 students at the middle school and 83 students at the high school.
“What you’re asking me to do is go back to principals and ask them, how they’re staffed to teach those kids when there’s no more time to reach out to them,” Dyb said.
Other districts
Board member Mark Zachow said the school districts in Manawa, Marion, Iola, Weyauwega-Fremont, New London and Shawano are all moving to five days of in-person learning within the next couple of weeks.
“That’s six districts in the area. We’re going to be the only one doing four (days a week of in-person learning),” Zachow said.
Dyb said the districts in Weyauwega-Fremont and New London contracted with a private service to provide a different learning platform for the students doing all-virtual learning.
He added that the districts in Manawa and Marion have “very few” students doing all virtual learning. The Iola-Scandinavia School District shortened each school day to allow teachers to have 45 to 60 minutes each day to provide outreach to students doing all virtual learning.
Board member Ben Huber asked how much it costs to contract with a company to provide a learning platform for students who wish to be taught by all virtual means.
Dyb offered an example of $200 per class per student. That does not include the cost of a teacher to monitor it.
“That’s a budget breaker in a very short time,” Huber said.
After more discussion, Zachow asked why Clintonville is lagging behind other area school districts.
“Because we’re larger than a lot of them,” Dyb replied.
In response, Zachow said New London is a larger district.
“They have an alternative learning platform,” Dyb said. “They took all their virtual kids and shoved them off to some other company.”
“All we do is come up with excuses and reasons not to have these kids in school,” Zachow responded.
After the motion to return students to five days a week of in-person learning was defeated, a motion passed to have the district continue for 14 days with the four days per week in-person learning and to reevaluate it at the board’s Jan. 25 meeting.
Also, as part of that motion, the board tasked the administration with developing an implementation plan to return students in the district to five days a week of in-person learning.
The plan must be presented at the Jan. 25 meeting.
Zachow voted against that motion.