GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – Students across Northeast Wisconsin are returning to school, and the Green Bay Area Public School District reopened their doors to kids on Wednesday.
“Our staff is very excited to be able to have kids back in the classroom, to have them five days a week. They understand how important it is for that relationship building,” said District Communications Director Lori Blakeslee. “Our plan is to have a school year much like other school years.”
With the hopes of having a similar year to pre-pandemic experiences, Blakeslee says the first day of school also didn’t go off without a hitch.
“As always, there’s gonna be some hiccups on the first day of school. We know that there will be some late buses and things like that. We ask parents to just be patient with us, understanding, and let us know if something’s not going right so that we can correct it as quickly as possible,” Blakeslee said.
She says a kindergarten class she visited Wednesday morning already had students engaged in activities, eating breakfast – and had no tears from kids after being dropped off.
But even with the goal of having a ‘similar’ year to usual, there are still some precautions surrounding COVID-19. Masking while indoors is currently required for students district-wide.
“Our goal is to do whatever we can in relation to COVID to ensure that our students can be coming to school five days a week…Our kids get to enjoy outside recess, outside classrooms without masks. But indoors, we are asking them to mask,” Blakeslee told WTAQ News. “While there are still some COVID mitigation measures, we’re still planning on having Friday Night Lights with football games, we’re planning on proms and dances and all of those things that students experience as part of a normal school year.”
The district is hoping to see case numbers dwindle again towards what was seen in June and July. Blakeslee believes if that becomes the case, the school board would be very open to revisiting the masking policy and moving back towards business as usual.
Governor Tony Evers and state superintendent Dr. Jill Underly also showed up to greet students as they entered the classrooms at King Elementary School in Green Bay this morning.
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