Here's how many Sheboygan students are sick or quarantined, and the district's plan to keep schools in person
Maya HiltySHEBOYGAN - One thing everyone seems to agree on is that in-person learning is a top priority this year.
“Kids are really happy to be back in person, back in school connecting and reconnecting with people that they weren’t able to see as much,” said Claire LaLiberte, a language arts teacher at Central High School.
The start of school this year has “definitely brought a change of mood,” she said.
A key takeaway of Tuesday night’s school board meeting was that, if COVID-19 cases rise in schools, additional restrictions may be put in place to keep kids in person.
Administrators said having 20%-30% of students absent could trigger schools’ return to online learning, and the school board asked administrators to determine a threshold at which school-level mask mandates would be used as an extra precaution.
Positive cases and student absences: A breakdown of the district’s COVID numbers
Some school board members remarked Tuesday that the numbers of positive cases among students and staff are “surprisingly” low.
The district’s online COVID-19 dashboard went live Tuesday and is updated daily.
As of Wednesday, less than half of 1% of students and staff districtwide had tested positive for COVID-19, with 25 active student cases and five active staff cases.
The 50 total student cases that have been identified since the start of school Sept. 1 have been evenly spread between elementary, middle and high school students.
Another online dashboard of daily attendance reports shows the percentage of students absent as a result of illness (including illnesses other than COVID-19) or quarantine.
Last week, absence numbers averaged between 2.8% and 3.8% districtwide, and earlier this week, between 4.5% to 5.5% of students were sick or quarantined districtwide, ranging from 1.9% at Early Learning Center on Wednesday to 12.1% at Longfellow Elementary on Monday.
District administrators told The Sheboygan Press that the overall student absence rate for the 2018-2019 school year, prior to the pandemic, was around 5%. That number isn't a perfect comparison for this year's numbers, because it included all types of student absences, instead of exclusively sickness and quarantine.
Still, district administrators said none of the school absence rates at this point is concerning.
Seth Harvatine, district superintendent, said Tuesday that 430 kids were out sick and 130 quarantined because of COVID-19.
In response to a question from board member Kay Robbins, he also said some close contacts who would otherwise quarantine are not being identified because people “are not freely giving up” who their close contacts are and some people don’t answer calls from county health officials.
Although by Wednesday no schools had more than 10% of students absent, on Monday, Longfellow Elementary, Etude High (11.1%) and Central High (11.3%) had above 10% of students absent, with Cleveland Elementary (9.8%) and James Madison Elementary (9.4%) close to the threshold.
If more than 10% of students at a school are absent because of illness, the district has always — even prior to the pandemic — been required to notify county public health officials about the situation.
The health department is then, by law, able to issue directives to reduce spread within classrooms, schools or the district as a whole.
“They could say, for this period of time, you need to implement a mitigation strategy you’re not currently implementing," Harvatine said. "For example, a mask mandate or temporary move to virtual learning.”
At what point would schools move online?
On Tuesday, Harvatine presented to the school board loose guidelines for what may cause elementary classrooms, which are distinct cohorts, or elementary, middle or high schools to temporarily move to online learning.
For elementary classrooms, a determination of COVID-19 spread within the classroom or some number of students or staff quarantined could necessitate a temporary move to online learning.
Schools may move to online learning if roughly 20% to 30% of students or 10% of staff are quarantined, or if the school is unable to adequately staff classrooms. For example, Harvatine said that when six of 20 kids tested positive for COVID-19 in a classroom in Oshkosh, it transitioned to online.
In addition, if three or more classrooms in an elementary school move online, the entire school will temporarily follow suit.
Harvatine explained there are no magic numbers that would make schools go online. For instance, if 20% to 30% of students are absent because of quarantine but a large number of quarantined students will be returning in a day or two, schools may not go online, he said.
Who needs to quarantine and how will quarantined kids stay caught up?
Last year, quarantined students had an online link to the classroom, but that limited teachers’ options for how to work with their kids, such as doing labs or group work, Harvatine said.
This year, keeping students caught up will look much like it did when students were out sick before the pandemic.
“If you’re out, you’re going to be working with your individual teachers to determine what the best plan is," Harvatine said. "That could mean logging into class virtually, following up with a teacher, or doing some individual check-ins."
If students or staff are symptomatic (with a fever and/or other symptoms), they have to stay home until they have improved symptoms, have been fever-free for at least 24 hours and have a negative COVID-19 test. If not tested, students and staff will need to quarantine for 10 days.
Students and staff also need to quarantine if they are unvaccinated and someone in their household has COVID-19 or the health department has identified that they are a close contact of another positive case.
County health officials are responsible for interviewing people who have tested positive to identify close contacts and will enter names into a list to which district nurses have access.
Quarantine, in these cases, means students and staff have to stay home for 10 to 14 days after their exposure. If they choose to get a COVID-19 test on day six or seven of their quarantine and the result is negative, they can return to school as early as the seventh day after their last exposure.
The state health department has made free COVID-19 testing available to public school districts, and Harvatine hopes to have 18 testing sites, some full-time and some part-time, set up in the next two to three weeks for quarantined students and staff.
School board seeks more clarity on masking
The district's plan to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in schools in many ways follows recommendations from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Harvatine said Tuesday.
For instance, the district promotes vaccines for students 12 and older and hosted on-site vaccine clinics last year.
In addition, the district has used federal COVID-19 funding to improve classroom ventilation. All schools are at or above recommended ventilation levels, and all schools’ HVAC systems are being upgraded, starting last summer and potentially continuing into next year.
A lot of attention has been given to the district’s mask-optional policy, with the school board voting 5-4 on Aug. 31 to reject the CDC’s recommended mask requirement at “high” or “substantial” rates of COVID-19 transmission in the county.
More:Sheboygan schools will still not require masks after contentious 5-hour meeting
At Tuesday’s meeting, board members requested that administrators present a plan that lays out at what level of positivity and/or student absences the district would implement a mask mandate to individual schools.
Administrators will present the plan either at the next board meeting, on Sept. 28, or whenever they are ready, for board members to discuss.
The decision came after about two hours of board discussion on masking, with most board members agreeing they don’t want to continue discussing and changing the mask policy throughout the school year since they do not have consensus on whether a mask-optional or masks-required policy is best for students.
“It’s time to put a threshold in place so we’re not constantly going back and forth on this," board member Robbins said. "Otherwise, we’re going to go back and forth and back and forth on this the whole school year.”
Reach Maya Hilty at 920-400-7485 or MHilty@sheboygan.gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @maya_hilty.