APPLETON, WI (WTAQ) – Appleton Schools are adjusting their schedules for the fourth quarter, bringing students closer to full-time in-person classes.
“5th and 6th graders are currently in a hybrid model, so they attend school two days a week, virtually three days a week. So on March 15th, they will come back full time, five days a week,” said Appleton Schools Chief Financial Officer Greg Hartjes. “On April 5th, our seventh through twelfth graders are going to come back full time but only four days a week. They’ve also been in a hybrid model up until this point.”
Hartjes points out that the shift comes as a natural break ends the quarter, preceding the district’s spring break during the last week of March. Coming back to start the fourth quarter fresh, he says, just makes sense.
While Hartjes says it’s definitely a step in the right direction, especially as parents look at it, there will still be some challenges for teachers and administration.
“There’s going to be some level of anxiety, some concern, simply because we’ve put all the structures in place and we’ve implemented them over the last 6 weeks to have only half the students present in grades 5 through 12,” Hartjes told the WTAQ Morning News with Matt and Earl. “You’re going to now I have 24 to 30 students, so obviously that makes it more difficult for us to distance students [with] simply more bodies in our schools.”
As for mitigation efforts like distancing, Hartjes says it simply isn’t possible to keep 30 students a full six feet apart in every classroom. That’s where the district had to get a little creative.
“We will put students in a pod of three to four students. Those students will have their desks pushed close together in a classroom, and then that pod will be 6 feet from the next pod…It’s something that has been effective in other local districts, and we have had to do that in a couple of areas in our K-4 classrooms and has shown to be effective,” Hartjes explained. “One of the students in that pod comes down with symptoms, we can contact trace fairly easily and quarantine as needed [with] just the students that were in that pod. It keeps you from having to quarantine or contact trace through a whole classroom.”
The district is also still ironing out the plans for how to handle unstructured periods like passing time and lunch time.
As for other requirements, Hartjes says they haven’t seen too many issues.
“Students have really responded very well. They’re keeping their masks on for the most part, they understand they can’t stop and talk to friends in a group during passing time,” Hartjes said. “We’re really not seen transmission in our schools – student to student, student to staff, or staff staff.”
To hear the full conversation with Hartjes, click here.
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