Schools may face virus for 18 months
State: Systems should plan for extended threat
Wisconsin education officials think the majority of schools will reopen in fall, but they encouraged local leaders Monday to prepare for 18 more months of the coronavirus threat.
That means considering alternatives like shortened weeks, or blends of inperson, physically distanced and virtual learning, according to extensive new guidance from the state’s Department of Public Instruction.
The 87-page document released Monday is meant to aid districts as they prepare to resume at least some in-person learning next school year while navigating daunting challenges posed by a pandemic that’s infected more than 25,000 Wisconsinites since March.
Above all, DPI’ emphasizes the need for flexibility, as the pandemic continues to be an ever-changing situation. DPI said the guidelines will be updated if health and safety guidelines change.
Other recommendations mentioned in the document include children and staff wearing masks as much as possible, shrinking class sizes and rearranging desks to allow for social distancing, as well as scheduling routine hand washing throughout the school day and providing hand sanitizer on buses.
Many questions remain as schools prepare for another school year that could be interrupted by coronavirus. The guidelines don’t make clear how schools should proceed with sports and other extracurricular activities, other than a brief mention that administrators and school board members should
review policies — especially equipment sterilization and the allowance of spectators and close-contact sports.
Perhaps the biggest question is how Wisconsin schools will have the financial resources to actually implement some of the recommendations, as they brace for one of the toughest budget seasons in memory.
“What we’re hearing the most is that districts and parents are looking at all of this and have more questions than answers. There’s still so much uncertainty,” said Heather DuBois Bourenane, executive director of the Wisconsin Public Education Network, a nonpartisan, nonprofit education advocacy organization.
“You see this laundry list of things that schools are going to need to do, and none of this is going to be easy and none of this is going to be cheap,” she said. “I’m a little bit worried that in the absence of an orchestrated campaign to make sure our schools have the resources they need, we just have some non-binding guidelines that they’re going to have trouble implementing.”
Neenah Joint School District Superintendent Mary Pfeiffer said Monday she appreciated DPI’s guidance as the district, which serves over 6,200 students in northeastern Wisconsin, prepares for a soft opening of district buildings early next month, and then next school year.
But at the same time, Pfeiffer wasn’t sure how feasible some of DPI’s recommendations would be in Neenah. The district, she said, may not be able to afford to cut class sizes in half, and not all classrooms necessarily have the space to distance all students 6 feet apart.
“I think they have done a good job in trying to meet the needs of over 400 school districts,” she said. “The difficult part of where we’re at is there’s no one size fits all, and I think they’ve provided a lot of different alternatives that districts can review and consider based on what their community needs.”
DPI can’t order school closures if the virus surges in the state again. Public health officials make that call, as they did under the direction of Gov. Tony Evers in March. But Monday’s guidance makes clear that local school officials are responsible for choosing how they will reopen, according to Jim Bender, president of the school voucher advocacy group School Choice Wisconsin.
“The vast majority of schools have been wondering what is the legal landscape and who is in control and can we make our own decisions because time is of the essence,” Bender said. Schools now have just weeks to buy protective equipment, laptops and thermometers to distribute.
The new guidance, developed with DHS and groups that lobby on behalf of public schools — including the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators, Wisconsin Association of School Boards, and the state’s largest teachers union Wisconsin Education Association Council — comes after public and private schools were forced to quickly figure out distance learning with little warning this spring.
To acknowledge the hurdles school officials faced, lawmakers passed a bill that exempted school districts from meeting state requirements on hours of instruction and state testing.
School districts and private schools each adopted their own plan, and some districts provided little or no instruction during the spring semester because they serve high numbers of low-income students without resources at home to learn virtually.
Bender said state officials should allow schools to be flexible but shouldn’t “just throw accountability out the window.”
“You’ve got to find a balance — you’ve got to have flexibility but you can’t just say, do whatever you want to do,” Bender said.
DPI’s guidelines are not a mandate, and don’t spell out any standard of instruction requirements for districts.
However, the state’s requirement for hours of instruction remains in place for the 2020-21 school year, meaning districts that did not immediately provide virtual learning in spring — like Milwaukee Public Schools, the state’s largest school district that serves 75,000 mostly low-income children of color — will have to do so in the fall or risk losing funding.
The recommendations were released two days before DPI officials and other school groups were scheduled to testify before the Assembly’s education committee about reopening schools this fall.
The state’s guide offers a wide variety of scenarios for school officials to consider, including keeping instruction virtual for middle and high schoolers — who were more easily able to adapt to the new learning environment brought on by the shutdown — while bringing younger students back to classrooms.
Under that scenario, elementary students would start back at school first and would attend four full days per week at multiple sites. If middle schoolers were kept at home, the elementary schoolers could use those facilities in order to reduce the student-teacher ratio and better follow physical distancing recommendations.
According to other scenarios suggested by DPI, schools could require students to attend school two or four days per week instead of five, to allow for deep cleaning, smaller amounts of students in buildings at once and extra time for planning and professional learning.
Students could be divided into cohorts and alternate between attending school in person one week, then receiving virtual instruction the next in an effort to reduce the amount of children in a school building at one time.
According to one DPI model, the cohorts could attend on a Monday/Tuesday or Thursday/Friday schedule, and school officials could use Wednesdays to clean between groups.
Regardless of the scenario a school district chooses, DPI recommends a student-teacher ratio of 10:1 or fewer for English language learner, special education, gifted and talented and other resource programs
When children are at school, instruction might look a bit different, too, to prevent large amounts of students from gathering in one space.
According to one DPI model, students could learn by rotating through learning stations on a fixed schedule. A teacher might instruct a small group of students, while a floating teacher or paraprofessional looks over another group of students as they complete independent learning or collaborative activities.
Under another model, students would learn independently through online coursework and lectures, while teachers would use in-person class time for teacher-guided practice activities or projects.