By Lea Kopke
Correspondent
DE PERE – The final reopening plan for the De Pere school district was approved by the school board with a virtual audience of more than 300 attendees watching Monday, Aug. 3.
Under the plan, students K-6 will attend school in-person and students 7-12 will have a blended learning style, consisting of two cohorts, each meeting twice a week in-person.
Families who are uncomfortable sending their students to school can opt into a virtual learning plan.
Superintendent Ben Villarruel said families who wish to opt into the virtual plan have until Friday, Aug. 7 to enroll.
“As of today we have had 175 students from 93 families opt into the virtual environment, and they range in all grades,” Villarruel said. “We considered long and hard about giving parents the freedom to move from one environment to the other. Part of it is that once we set the staffing, if we allow free movement, there may not be enough staff in either environment to house the movement. To have to switch that from day to day would be disruptive to the students.”
The night opened with a period of public comments which spanned 50 minutes and allowed two dozen community members, including parents and teachers, to voice concerns and encouragements.
Recurring concerns included the wish for parents to be able to switch their student’s learning plan once during the trimester, questions about specifics of masking, quarantining requirements and confusion regarding discrepancies in school plans between the De Pere and Green Bay school districts.
Chris Ditzman, a parent of two students at Dickinson Elementary School, cited information regarding the effect of the virus on children before asking the board to consider adopting a plan similar to Green Bay’s.
“Quite honestly, it’s not safe to have this board meeting right now,” Ditzman said. “So when school opens, there will be students and likely staff infected with COVID-19 on the first day. I would like to see De Pere follow what Green Bay is doing. I don’t see how it’s completely unsafe on one side of Clay Street and Allouez… and two doors down in De Pere it is safe to send kids five days a week.”
Susadn Netzel, a parent of two district students, said she believed it was important for De Pere to move on with the plan and allow students to return to schools.
“I don’t want to start how Green Bay is going,” Netzel said. “I did listen in to the board meeting last night for them, with the parents coming in. I was in tears, hearing these parents who are working full time or can’t find the time to sit with their kids all day.”
Michael Landrum, an infectious disease doctor at Bellin Health and district parent, also answered questions at the meeting.
Landrum fielded questions regarding whether the district should consider going fully online at some point in the semester, how the district should respond to positive cases and how quickly it could anticipate receiving test results.
In the board discussion preceding the vote, Landrum spoke again to recommend the school look at guidelines similar to the Badger Bounce Back plan when planning to reopen.
“In terms of reopening or not, if you were to use the Badger Bounce Back plan criteria, the six things that they looked at, we would not have met phase one yet,” Landrum said. “So the schools would not be opening at this time. They would be staying virtual.”
The board voted to approve the reopening plan, with only Vice President Mark Meneau opposed.
With the approval of the return-to-school plan, the district will now move into operations planning.
Classes will begin Sep. 1, and the plan will be reevaluated at the January board meeting.