GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) — Students at Green Bay Area Public Schools, right now, won’t start returning until March 29th.
That’s if the tentative date of March 1st, set by state health officials, for teachers in the state to begin receiving COVID-19 vaccines holds up.
It’s a date that disappointed Green Bay Schools Superintendent Stephen Murley.
“Disappointed. I understand the state’s in a tough place, and may have some people that are perhaps more susceptible to infection than others and they’re trying to responsibly distribute it,” Murley told WTAQ. “I get that.”
The Green Bay School Board released a tentative schedule for a return to the classroom on Wednesday that called for staff to return to school on March 22nd, followed by Head Start through 5th grade students on March 29th, along with students in 6th and 9th grades. Grades 7, 8, 10, 11,and 12 will return to class on April 5th.
Virtual learning will still be available.
The new schedule matches up with a vote taken by the school board last week to hold off bringing students back to class until three weeks after inoculations are made available to teachers.
Murley says, although frustrating, the board’s decision makes sense.
“If we want to make sure that when we switch instructional models, that we have a high level of confidence that we can keep kids in school,” said Murley. “We don’t want to be in a position where you’re in school today, out tomorrow, in the next day, out the following day.”
To do that, he said, it would require staff get the COVID-19 vaccine so that they can keep teaching without having to quarantine.
The board made the decision on waiting three weeks after a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available for teaches while estimating that such a date might fall in early February. The board has the power to change the date, but so far plans to do so have not emerged.
In the meantime, some parents are angry. Some have threatened to pull their children out of school and place them in other districts. Murley says the district has seen a drop in enrollment, especially among pre-K and Kindergarten students whose parents prefer an in-person experience for their children’s first year in school.
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