R-I releases flexible return to learn plan

The Poplar Bluff R-I return to learn plan lays out three options, similar to other schools around the country, based on what the COVID-19 pandemic continues to look like.

Dr. Scott Dill, superintendent, described the plan as flexible and said the district may need to move between the plans over the course of the school year.

“This document is not intended in anyway to be an end all be all of return to learn plans,” Dill said. “It has changed even since we finalized it this afternoon … This will continue to be a living document.

“This is our July 23, 2020, return to learn plan. We will continue updating and revising this to do what’s best for our kids.”

The school board approved plans A, B and C Thursday night for the district to use as a guide throughout the next school year.

Under all three plans, students have the option to take classes at home through the district’s new distance learning program, and those attending in-person classes under plans A and B are recommended to wear face coverings in all settings, but it is not required in any.

“That may change,” Dill said. “If we get guidance from the state or Butler County Health Department that in order to keep the doors open we need to wear face coverings, then I will bring that to the board, and we’ll have that discussion.”

Dill said he hopes to bring students back at plan A, but anticipates bringing some elements of plan B into it, but he hasn’t made that decision yet.

“My instinct is that we’ll probably need to have some elements of B in,” Dill said. “For instance, our back-to-school events. With the increasing number of cases in the community and the anxiety level associated with that, convocation worries me.

“I’m desperate to go back to school; if I put all my teachers in a room rubbing elbows and then 14, 15 days later the entire fourth or fifth grade goes down, I have a problem. Open houses, same thing. I’m not ready to make those decisions yet, but eliminating large group gatherings and eliminating visitors to the building are two low hanging fruits in terms of a plan B and those two things make a big difference.”

Dill said he is not ready to “say yay or nay on that. I want to see how the situation develops. We have almost exactly a month before our first day of school. A whole lot has happened in the last month.”

Plan A is close to a traditional school year, where students would be on campus for classes with additional screenings and sanitation practices.

During this plan, family members should screen students before bringing them to school for COVID-19 including potential exposure, as well as:

Fever or chills;

Cough;

Headache;

Muscle aches;

Nausea, vomiting or diarrhea;

New loss of taste or smell;

New runny nose or congestion;

Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing; or

Sore throat.

Dill said this list may change as more information about COVID-19 symptoms becomes available.

Students who are exhibiting symptoms or feel sick should not come to school, according to the plan.

Under this plan, safety procedures will look different for each building and age group.

Hand sanitizer will be available on buses and in the hallways. Buses and lunchrooms will be cleaned between each group of students.

Drinking fountains will have limited availability, so students are encouraged to bring individual water bottles.

Visitors will be allowed under most recent guidelines from the Butler County Health Department, according to the plan.

Under plan B, large gatherings may be canceled or postponed, visitors may be limited and classes may be organized into cohorts in order to lower the number of students on campus at a time.

“Worse-case scenario is dividing students into cohorts and going to alternating schedules,” Dill said. “Things would have to be pretty significant before we would consider that as an option because we know that being at school is what kids need to do.”

He said that could involve splitting the students into two groups with one going to school on Mondays and Wednesdays, the other on Tuesdays and Thursdays with Friday as an at-home learning day for all students. However, the administration still is considering ways to do that if it does prove to be needed.

“There’s merits to a lot of the different plans,” Dill said. “Hopefully, we will not have to walk that path.”

Under either plan, the district would not provide mass screenings to avoid unsafe bottlenecks in traffic, but nursing staff will be trained on protocol if a student is referred with symptoms.

Plan C involves all students doing school from home through the distance learning curriculum the district acquired last month.

That curriculum still is taught by district teachers, but is done at home through programs, such as video conferences and online activities.

Parents have the option to sign their students up for this curriculum if they don’t feel comfortable sending them to in-person classes.

“I did not write this plan to appease the masses,” Dill said. “If I wanted to make people happy, I’d sell ice cream. The board hired me to make hard choices and these are among the hardest we make.”