GREEN BAY (NBC26)-- The Green Bay Area Public School District's Board of Education will follow the CDC's instructional model as the basis for when to safely transition out of full-time remote learning.
The school board voted 6-1 in favor of using the model Monday during a virtual meeting.
The model shows different indicators that would cause the lowest to highest risk of COVID-19 transmission in schools and what type of learning should happen at each stage. Following the model means Brown County would need to have less than 100 new cases per 100,000 people within 14 days to switch to a blended category, which would be some days at home and some at school. To be fully on-site, there would need to be less than 20 cases.
"We are not going to get there probably this year," said Andrew Becker, treasurer of the Board of Education. "I don't like choosing a metric that essentially gives no hope of going back to school fully."
Others felt differently.
"Whether or not it's a daunting number, it's a number that the CDC has given for us for it to be safe for our kids to go back to school," said Dawn Smith, a trustee with the Board of Education.
The district has been virtual since the start of the school year.
Some parents are fed up with e-learning.
A father of a second grade student in GBAPS described over the phone during the meeting how his daughter use to love school and now "despises it."
"It hurts as a parent to know my child loves school and I can't even get her to sit through the required time for school. She's not as excited as she was prior."
Another core indicator outlined in the model is the ability of the school to implement five mitigation strategies: Consistent and correct use of masks; social distancing to the largest extent possible; hand hygiene and respiratory etiquette; cleaning and disinfection; and contact tracing in collaboration with the local health department.
Board members said the district can do four out of five of the requirements right now. The health department is still working on contact tracing, which had become more complicated due to the high number of cases in the area.
Although not all board members thought this was the ideal re-opening plan, some board members said this is the best the district has right now.
"We have to have a flexibility and a place where we can be nimble to look at us and say, "this is going to guide us for now,"" said Kristina Shelton, vice president of the Board of Education.
The school board will reevaluate the model on a weekly basis. They also voted 4-3 to revisit the topic again during a meeting on Dec. 14.
