School board holds special session to tie up COVID loose ends
By Eric Valentine
Blaine County School District is just two weeks away from reopening campuses to in-person learning, albeit a hybrid at least for now where kids will learn in classrooms two days a week and at home three days a week. The process has been anything but simple for everyone from district families to district teachers staff. On Monday, Aug. 24, trustees held a special session to handle some outstanding COVID-impacted matters. Here’s a rundown of what they discussed and the actions they took.
Nursing It Along
Trustees unanimously agreed to spend up to $200,000 of reserve funds to bring additional nurses on board for the school year. The positions would be part-time and each nurse would serve no more than two campuses at a time.
Although the board approved using its own emergency funds to cover the new costs, BCSD Superintendent GwenCarol Holmes confirmed the district will apply for FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) monies.
“There’s no promises (from FEMA), but we’re going to give it a try,” Holmes said.
Good Sports
As things stand now, sports programs this school year are a go. And according to Wood River High School athletic director Kevin Stilling, so far so good.
“We’ve had very few symptomatic kids. Every test we’ve done on athletes so far has come back negative except for one test an athlete took the week before they came back,” said Stilling.
But with league play fast approaching, BCSD athletes will soon be exposed to kids from areas outside the Wood River Valley who may or may not be following the COVID-prevention guidelines promoted by health officials and who may be in so-called higher risk areas around the state. And, given the nature of particular sports, health officials have rated some sports as lower-risk (like swimming), moderate-risk (like soccer), and higher-risk (like football).
All this means trustees have to decide whether to proceed with particular sports activities—using parental waivers and adherence to health guidelines, of course—or to cancel participation in sports programs, at least to some degree, indefinitely.
Trustee Amber Larna pressed hardest for finding a way to move forward with the programs, assuming waivers and guidelines were in place. The first-year trustee advocated for limiting spectators, requiring mask usage by opposing teams, and other control measures.
Dr. John Hatzenbuehler, a health district point person, cautioned trustees, noting that 56 colleges have pulled out of the fall football season and this weekend alone there were four COVID-19 cases from Carey during his time at the hospital.
“There was one young person, three older, and one of the older patients was infected by a grandkid,” Hatzenbuehler said.
Ultimately, trustees decided 3–1 with Larna dissenting to adopt a sort of case-by-case decision protocol where games against schools in lower-risk areas would go forward and games against schools in higher-risk areas would not. The protocol would also allow coaches to pull their teams from a competition if the opposing team was not adhering to particular safety guidelines.
Calling All Teachers
Trustees also considered two COVID-prevention-related issues impacting teachers. One was whether teachers should be required to be on campus on Fridays, the so-called online learning days when students are for the most part not on campus. The other was whether teachers should be allowed to bring their children with them if they are expected to be on campus on Fridays.
Principals have been leaning strongly toward having teachers on campus on those virtual learning Fridays. They say that having teachers in one spot during these unprecedented times makes it easier to coordinate plans and share best practices.
Trustees ultimately decided to let the principals carry on with their policies and to take a look at the matter again at the end of September to see if anything needs tweaking.
“We’re all in a continuous learning environment here,” Trustee Dan Turner remarked. “What we don’t know this week we may know next week.”