New Bremen provides update on school’s COVID policy

NEW BREMEN — Superintendent Jason Schrader provided a COVID-19 update to board members Wednesday night during the New Bremen Schools Board of Education meeting.

Schrader said the school year began with normal operations and conditions at the school.

“We had no social distancing and we made a parental choice on whether students wear masks,” he said.

Schrader said the school has had 19 students quarantined so far this year, saying the students were quarantined for household contact and not something that occurred at the school.

“Starting Thursday, we’ll have seven students that are in quarantine so we’re down a little bit,” he said.

The district has had three positive cases this year with two students and one staff member testing positive.

“I feel like we’ve done very well with what we’ve had in place right now,” said Schrader. “It’s least restrictive. We can always become more restrictive.”

Schrader said he recently met with superintendents from other

schools in Auglaize County and surrounding counties to better learn what each school’s policies for COVID were.

“We all went around the room and kind of laid out what our procedures were and what we were doing. We’re all very similar in our approach right now,” he said.

Schrader reiterated that it would be easy for the school to implement policy changes if cases were to spike.

“Right now I’d say we continue the course. If something changes, we definitely have the ability to react to that aggressively,” he said. “I’m not saying that’s not going to happen, that we’re not going to have to adjust, but we’re not necessarily seeing a spike in our cases right now.”

Schrader said that he hasn’t compared this year’s number of cases to last year’s. Last year’s school year began in September.

“If we were going to do something immediately, it would be very easy for us to implement social distancing,” he said.

In other business:

• The board accepted the resignation of Michael Jenkins, grade 7-12 custodian, effective Aug. 27. Jenkins has been employed with New Bremen Schools for seven years. The board also accepted the retirement of Scott Paul, effective Dec. 31. Paul has been employed with the school for 29 years.

• The board approved coaching contracts for Spencer Elking and Jane Homan for seventh grade girls basketball.

• K-6 Principal Diane Kramer informed board members that they currently have 55 students enrolled for the 2022-23 kindergarten class. She said they typically have 40 to 45 students signed up this time of year.

• Kramer said administrators were working through traffic flow patterns for students being picked up and dropped off on school days. She said they are able to safely get 800 students picked up within eight minutes.

• Grades 7-12 Principal Marcus Overman reported that he and guidance counselor Chris Lauterbach have had several conversations with Edison State about the future in regard to the school’s College Credit Plus program. He said they are trying to develop the best College Credit Plus pathway for the students to keep them engaged and interested in taking classes in New Bremen.

• Overman said that he will be hosting a meeting for current 8th grade students on Sunday to talk about their upcoming trip to Washington D.C.

• Schrader reported that grades 5-12 are one-to-one with Chromebooks meaning that each student in grades fifth through 12th has their own Chromebook and are able to take them home with them at the end of each day. He said that the school has 240 Chromebooks available for students in grades K-4 and that they are getting closer to being oneto-one for those grades.

• Schrader mentioned that the Komminsk Innovation Lab is up and running. The school now has five 3-D printers, a 54’’ vinyl printer/cutter, a sublimation printer and a 24’’ laser cutter/ engraver.