APPLETON, WI (WTAQ) – Most students in the Appleton Area School District have been learning from home all year, with a few exceptions. But that is changing a bit next semester.
The second semester begins January 19th. And with that, students will return to real, physical classrooms.
“That’s the date that we gave our parents in terms of potentially wanting to change from fully virtual if they had chosen some of our charter schools to engage in some of the hybrid or vice versa,” said Superintendent Judy Baseman. “It gets us past, hopefully, any kind of increased transmission as a result of the holidays. So we were very purposeful in finding that time frame. We feel that it’s a natural transition back in.”
7th-12th grade students will have two days in-person and three days virtual to start the semester. Those virtual classes will be asynchronous learning, with some synchronous classes built in. As for the younger learners in K-6th grade, an AM/PM split hybrid model will reduce class sizes to provide for more distancing.
“Doing our best to ensure the distancing that we need, masks will be required of everyone – students and staff – all the way through K-12.Then also that increased cleaning, handwashing, and all those things that we know work,” Baseman said. “We want to get our kids back in school, but also knowing that we have to be able to provide those mitigation strategies that we know will make a difference to keep our students and our staff as safe as possible.”
There was opposition to the fully virtual model, with recall efforts launched against three Appleton School Board members. But that wasn’t exactly the main driving factor behind the decision.
“It’s also paying attention to our students. Every student, every day is our motto…Quantitatively but also qualitatively, hearing from families, from students themselves about how difficult it is to be away from the classroom. So we started with our virtual plus [model],” Baseman told WTAQ News. “How are things going, not only from the COVID levels in the community, but also the achievement of our students and social/emotional aspect of this as well…Our transmission level has been very, very low. We’ve been tracking that. So that built our confidence to layer in even more groups of students, again in a very careful way, to make sure that we are keeping that transmission to a minimum within our school settings.”
The district is continuing to review data internally in terms of student achievement, but Baseman says it’s important to listen to the voices of students and families who are struggling with solely virtual lessons.
“We’re all at our best when we were in person. So I think the decision was really – we have confidence in our strategy, so let’s see if we can bring more kids in for more amounts of time,” Baseman said. “It’s not just one or the other, it’s really looking at that whole picture. We know how much our students have have missed that socialization, [and] our staff have also come to us.”
When staff and teachers began echoing the calls of students, Baseman says that was a significant shift. A number of teachers reported not having been able to engage with certain students through virtual learning, and had to begin bringing some students in for in-person help to make that connection and make sure they were doing okay.
As for the district’s plans for the future, Baseman says it’s not just flipping a switch to bring everyone back full-time.
“There is guidance that kind of gives you a phased approach, so you when you are accomplishing certain mitigation strategies and things are going well and the numbers are going in the right direction, then this is the next piece,” Baseman explained. “Certainly getting to our original hybrid for elementary, which would be having our kindergarten through fourth grade fully in person, 5 days a week, is our next increment that we certainly want to get to.”
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