Board to vote on COVID-19 protocols next week

The Shawano School District is going to try to keep its schools open full-time for in-person learning and try to avoid the frustrations that families endured last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The district’s policy and curriculum committee met Aug. 9 with officials to look at the latest recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and see how they could fit in with schools’ mitigation efforts. According to Superintendent Randi Anderson, administrators got together the previous week to come up with a plan that would be presented to the full Shawano School Board on Aug. 16.

“We know that our priority and our ultimate goal is to keep students and staff in our buildings for 190 days this year,” Anderson said.

Jessica Wiesman, a nurse with the school district, pointed out there are some changes in the CDC guidelines that came out in July from the protocols the district had in place for the 2020-21 school year. Masking is being recommended even for those students and staff who are vaccinated, but the district is only going to require staff to mask. Masking will be required for everyone on buses because it’s a federal transportation requirement, according to Wiesman.

Physical distancing requirements have been relaxed somewhat, with the 6 feet apart requirement being reduced to a minimum of 3 feet, Wiesman said.

“We can’t do 6 feet and get all of the kids back into the building,” Wiesman said.

The public schools will not be screening students for the coronavirus on a regular basis, she added, saying that parents need to be aware of their children’s health and keep them home if they are ill.

“Some places actively screened students as they walked in the door, but we chose not to do that last year,” Wiesman said. “It’s better for parents to just be aware of their own children and do that before they get to school.”

Quarantine protocols will be different, to the relief of some committee members. Wiesman said that anyone suspected of being in contact with someone who has the coronavirus will be quarantined for 10 days if they are not wearing a mask and don’t show symptoms, but they can return after seven if the person gets a negative COVID-19 test on the fifth day. If both the positive case and the close contact are wearing masks, no quarantine will be required.

Board member James Davel praised the shorter quarantine, noting that parents were frustrated with the 14-day isolation last year, even after the CDC changed it in the middle of the year. He said that the CDC guidelines have been a moving target that the schools should adjust to when they change.

“The school stayed with the 14, and the CDC was recommending 10 and public health would tell people it was 10,” Davel said. “My recommendation is that, when we’re deciding things, we’re very clear about some of these things. Parents were very frustrated.”

Davel urged district officials to make sure there’s clear communication between the schools and families.

“I didn’t like what the school did last year when the governor’s order was lifted, essentially lifting the mask policy at school, but we didn’t say that,” Davel said. “We’ve got to be clear with parents about what the expectation is.”

Davel said the same should apply when it comes to requiring vaccinations. Anderson said there are no plans to require older students and adults to be vaccinated in order to be in the school, and there are no vaccines approved for children under 12.

Davel urged flexibility in COVID-19 protocols.

“What we saw last year was all one-sided, and it was all gloom and doom — everything’s wrong,” Davel said. “The intent is to keep these kids in school as long as we can.”

Board member Chris Gull said it looked like the coronavirus is never going to completely go away, and maybe it was time to start treating it like the flu.

“It’s going to mutate, and it’s going to be here for the next 100 years,” Gull said. “We have to treat it the way that it is, and it’s a virus.”

lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com