R-I officials look at plans to reopen school to students

The Poplar Bluff R-I School District is coming up with multiple plans and a set of guidelines for students to return to school.

Summer school is scheduled to run in July for all campuses with some virtual credit recovery courses in June for high school students.

Safety procedures for on-campus summer school are still in conversation.

Dr. Scott Dill, superintendent, said the state has given districts some room for the fall start date. This is the first year a recent state law requires school districts to start no sooner than 10 days before the first Monday in September.

Given the situation with COVID-19 and students leaving school several months earlier this year, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Board of Education voted to allow school districts to submit a request to start earlier.

However, Dill said, at this point he’s inclined to keep the approved calendar, which starts Aug. 24.

“I want to be respectful of our families,” he said. “They’ve been through a lot and I think a lot of people … probably pushed some things that would have been done in July into August in terms of family gathers.”

Another part of his reasoning is that maintaining the Aug. 24 start date will give the district time to come together after summer school and address how things need to move in the future.

Some St. Louis school districts, he said, are looking at moving the start of school up to as early as Aug. 4. Dill said he doesn’t understand the reasoning behind doing that except a little more time before the flu season starts again, but the district only has so many contract days for teachers.

Dill said he would accept input on the topic.

As part of ongoing conversations, the district is also looking at options for returning to school in the fall. Dill said there are a lot of hypothetical options involved in these conversations.

Scenario A, he said, is that everything can run as normal with some updated safety precautions.

“Put the pieces in place that the public, our teachers and students need to feel safe, but with the recognition that flu season is going to come around again whether that’s COVID-19, Flu A or a COVID-20,” he said. “We offer reasonable assurances; we acquire some additional cleaning equipment.”

In scenario B, there are some cases in the community, but the district is trying to keep schools open.

In scenario C, the school has needed to close and run in a distance learning model.

“In this one, I think everyone got caught a little flatfooted,” Dill said. “That can’t happen again. We are planning for a worse case scenario, what do we do; how do we respond?”

As part of this scenario, the district is discussing changes to the alternate methods of instruction plan.

“I’ll make no bones about it, our teachers, administrators, food services, everybody involved, their efforts have been superhuman this spring, but it was at best educational triage,” Dill said. “It wasn’t even close to an approximation of school.

“We need to come up with a plan that works better; takes those equity and accessibility issues for all kids (into account). It takes the rigor issues into account for all kids. It’s something that can count for school. That’s no small task.”

In any of these plans, Dill said, the custodial team plays a large role. If they can’t get the buildings cleaned and disinfected quickly, then that has an impact on classes.

Preparing for these potential scenarios, there’s human resource pieces the district needs to look at. For instance, what each person’s responsibilities would be.

“I say those three for now, I could have an A1, A2, A3 by the time it’s all said and done,” Dill said.

There are two camps of thought right now, Dill explained, one says in favor of remaining closed and the other encouraging a full reopening. The district belongs somewhere in the middle, he said, as an extension of government to balance the needs of both groups.

The primary focus is to educate kids, he said.

“We’re never going to make everybody happy in this conversation,” Dill said.