Willow Schools to Open with Precautions but No Mask Requirement

In a special session on July 30, the Willow Springs School Board passed the COVID-19 Reopening Plan for Fall 2020. 

Presented by Superintendent of Schools Bill Hall, the Reopening Plan was developed by a committee of educators and school district employees following the recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), and the Howell County Health Department. 

The status of the education available through the school district will be determined by “Level Indicators.” That is, the school will remain open or will close based on the level of threat COVID-19 poses to the community. 

On the first day of school, August 24, 2020, the district is starting on Level 2 of 4. Level 2 is “Seated School with Health Precautions.” Level 3 is a combination of seated school and distance learning, and Level 4 is distance learning (or Alternative Methods of Instruction/AMI) only. 

The plan sets forth expectations for parents and school district staff members alike. Parents are expected to screen students at home for a temperature of 100F or higher as well as to monitor children for other symptoms of the virus. Parents are also requested to educate their children on the virus itself, good hygiene practices, use of surface disinfectants, and how to appropriately wear a mask, if parents desire the child to wear one. 

Teachers are expected to screen themselves for a fever at home before beginning work. Each teacher will be equipped with a thermometer to take the temperature of students in their class, “if appropriate,” and to train students to use hand sanitizer stations. Teachers and staff will enforce social distancing to the extent possible. Students will not be allowed to congregate in the halls during the school day. Every classroom will maintain a permanent seating chart that may not be changed without the approval of an administrator. 

Perhaps the foremost question on everyone’s mind was whether or not masks will be required. “At this time, staff members are not required to wear masks or PPE, but may do so at their discretion,” reads the plan, “Students may choose to wear masks or PPE, but they are not required while at school or on school transportation.”

The schools will provide a disposable mask to any student upon request. 

Students and school employees will be excluded from school based on the medical discretion of the school nurses, who will be following CDC guidelines. Children who test positive for COVID-19 will be excluded from school for a minimum of ten days. They may not return until they test negative twice. Untested students or staff who are excluded based on the presence of symptoms may not return to school until ten days have passed since their symptoms first appeared, until they have been fever-free for 24 hours, AND, until their other symptoms have improved.

Siblings or other students in the household of any excluded student will be excluded for a period of time 14 days past when the symptomatic student improves. That is, when a student is excluded, their siblings or household members will be excluded for an additional two weeks past when the first child improves. These siblings etc…could miss seated school for potentially four weeks. Providing a doctor’s note stating that a student or worker may return to school would trump any of the other quarantine procedures, so long as the individual has been fever-free for 24 hours. 

In Level 2 of operations, athletics and other activities will continue. If the district escalates to Level 3, athletics and other activities will be cancelled. At this time, spectators are allowed at all sporting events in the SCA. When traveling to other schools, coaches, sponsors, athletes, and student participants will follow the masking requirements and other protocols of the host school district. 

Curriculum Director Chris Waggoner presented the Alternative Methods of Instruction (AMI) the school is prepared to deploy to keep the students learning in the event of another extended school closure. Unlike the spring of 2020, distance learning options will be mandatory and will require some type of two-way communication between home and the school, whether it is virtual connectivity or printed schoolwork packets. A survey deployed by the school district reported that at least 16% of the responding participants do not have access to reliable internet service. The school district is prepared to provide tools to accommodate students without virtual connectivity, which may include providing hot spots and/or loaning Chromebooks. Superintendent Hall reported the school district has “plenty of Chromebooks to loan.”

The same survey indicated that approximately 9% of families will choose to homeschool their children this year. Between 14 and 21% of the 292 respondents said they are not comfortable sending their children back to school at all. Most parents seem to want a hybrid model of education combing seated instruction and distance learning. 

After the unanimous approval of the plan, students in Willow Springs will reenter school buildings, but with the ever-changing nature of the CIVD-19 pandemic, this could be temporary. School Board member Mac Gum summed it up by commenting, “The one thing we can guarantee is things will change.”

The full text of the Reopening Plan is available at http://www.willowspringsschool.com/bts.html.