Bonduel schools go virtual Monday due to staff shortage

Most grades coming back Tuesday; others to return next week
By: 
Lee Pulaski
City Editor

The Bonduel School District quickly had to go from in-person to virtual on Monday when it didn’t have enough staff members and substitutes to teach classes.

A notice was posted on Facebook at 9:34 p.m. Sunday by Superintendent Joe Dawidziak announcing the shift. He said staff members are having to quarantine themselves, and the district is having difficulty finding substitutes to fill in for the absent teachers.

”We also will be using tomorrow (Monday) to determine if students or groups of students need to quarantine and to notify those parents if that is the case,” Dawidziak wrote. “So we will have one day of virtual learning only tomorrow until we know more.”

Dawidziak said he did not have numbers indicating how many staff members were quarantining themselves, but he had to make the decision quickly, as he learned the information on Sunday night.

“There were two factors in play,” Dawidziak said. “One, we knew we were going to have an issue covering all of them. The other one was that I got the notification about 7:30 last (Sunday) night, and by the time I saw it on my phone, it was almost 8:30.”

Dawidziak said that trying to contact trace students who were in contact with the quarantined staff members on Sunday night would have been impossible, so the decision was made to make school all virtual for Monday at least while the district tried to get a handle on who might be impacted.

Third through 12th grades will be able to return to school on Tuesday, while the younger grades will have to remain in online learning for the rest of the week, according to Dawidziak. He anticipated that all students would likely be back in school next week.

Bonduel started the year with all of its students in classrooms five days a week with slightly shorter days.

While Dawidziak apologized online for the short notice in this case, he said it was possible he’d have to make snap decisions like that in the future if another surge in positive cases was found.

“Most districts understand that this is a possibility going throughout the school year from time to time,” Dawidziak said. “Most people are expecting that.”

lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com