GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – Students will return to class in the Green Bay Area Public School District, potentially within the next month.
After nearly four hours of debate and discussion, the school board voted to pass a proposal to bring students back in some situations while maintaining virtual learning options.
“We’re balancing science with a pragmatic need to bring your kids back as soon as possible. It’s a matter of being responsible and responsive…It’s been a tremendous challenge to understand that kids are struggling and we’re in a global pandemic and to try to find that balance,” said School Board President Eric Vanden Heuvel. “It’s my hope that we can pass a motion today with a date. And again, for some people it’s not gonna be fast enough, and for other people it’s going to be too fast.”
But the initial vote on a proposal that did include a specific date of February 15th for the first students to begin their return to the physical classroom tied at 3-3, and therefore did not pass.
The specific date became an issue with some board members after they learned that school staff likely won’t be part of the first wave of inoculations for Phase 1B.
“Those over 65 in the [Phase] 1B group are going to go before teachers. They will fill most of the spots for the next 2 weeks…We probably are not going to see our our education staff being vaccinated for the next 2 weeks,” said Superintendent Stephen Murley.
Teachers and school staff are categorized under Phase 1B of Wisconsin’s vaccination distribution plan, however, people ages 65 and older are ranked in a higher priority level. That means despite the launch of Phase 1B on Monday, January 25th, teachers will likely have to wait in line for what may be a few weeks before they are able to receive their first dose if they so choose.
“When the vaccine is available, we will offer it to all staff. It’s not mandatory,” Murley added. “It’s not about returning to class based on staff being vaccinated, it’s that we’re returning to school based on the vaccination being available to staff.”
An amended proposal, removing the specific date, passed just before 9:00 p.m. Tuesday night.
It reads:
“That the Green Bay Area Public School District shall commence in-person instruction (M, T, TH, F) for 3K-5th grade and A/B Cohorts in grades 6-9, 3 weeks after the first day vaccinations are available to school staff, and a blended instructional model with grades 7, 8, 10, 11, and 12 one week later, with the week of March 22 all students attending virtual and the same models of instruction resuming March 29, 2021, and that the administration shall develop criteria for transition to virtual learning due to transmission of COVID within the District’s schools.
Should the Brown County case burden reach 1,000 cases per 100,000 population per 14 days, an emergency board meeting shall be called regarding learning models.”
The topic will likely be discussed again during other district meetings next week.
But some parents who tuned into the lengthy debate were, to put things lightly, livid about the situation and decision.
“We’ve had a year of uncertainty and they just passed more uncertainty,” said Brooke Andrews. “It’s absolutely not enough. It’s an absolute debacle of a night. Four hours and this is where we are?”
Andrews questioned the reasoning behind much of the debate.
“Nobody is advocating for the kids. When did it become the job of the school board to try to mitigate the risk of the community? It’s not. Their job is to educate our children, and they’re failing!” Andrews told WTAQ News. “They’ve just kicked the can further down the road for a few more months, like they’ve been doing since last March.”
While speaking with us immediately after the meeting, Andrews’ husband called the district a ‘laughing stock’ as she tried to straighten out exactly what the timeline could potentially look like.
“If the teachers get vaccinated in early February, it’s then 3 weeks from then that our kids can be back in school. So it will be March before anybody sees the inside of the school,” she said. “The little kids will get two weeks of four days in-person. The older kids are going to get a Cohort model, so they’re going to get to go to school maybe four days [total] before spring break.”
Following spring break, the district will go back into virtual learning for a week. Andrews accepted that a move like that would be fair, and understood the purpose behind it.
She’s also part of a Facebook group, which is filled with Green Bay parents who are fighting to get their kids back into school. Many of them took exception to some comments made, and once the final verdict was reached – the page was packed with frustrated families calling the decision ‘unacceptable.’
“People were erupting over leaving the district. I counted 30-plus families that plan to leave the district because of what just happened tonight. That’s 1, 2, 3, 4 student homes. So we’re talking another mass exodus from the Green Bay Public School District,” Andrews claimed.
