CHENEY – By a unanimous 5-0 vote, the board of directors approved the Cheney School District’s partial reopening plan at their Sept. 30 meeting.
The plan, laid out for the directors at a Sept. 24 work session with few changes by last Wednesday, will allow kindergarten, special education and ECEAP (Early Childhood and Education Assistance Program) pre-school students — whose parents elected to do so — to return to onsite instruction.
ECEAP pre-school students began returning to two, half days on-site instruction and two-half days in distance learning per week on Oct. 5, with K-5 students receiving special education support less than 50 % of their school day on-site one half day per week, phasing to full-time once their grade level is back. All K-5 special education students began in-person instruction on Oct. 7.
Kindergarten students whose families selected in-person instruction will begin on-site in-person instruction Oct. 12, with half the students in this category in school that day and the other half in school Oct. 13, with all kindergarten students beginning daily onsite instruction Oct. 14.
“We still offer distance learning within our phases and in all our phases and we want to make sure that is an important piece that families know as well,” Superintendent Rob Roettger said.
Roettger said the district has not made any decisions about additional in-person instruction reopening — beginning with first and second-grades. Other districts have indicated those will be evaluated on a two-week basis.
“What we have talked about in our district is analyzing how our kindergarten goes, how our pre-K, goes how adding special education students go, looking at the health situation within our region working with the Health District and then making the decisions that make the most sense for our district, whether we start with first-grade at a certain point second-grade, what that next phase looks like,” he said.
At the Sept. 24 work session, school administrators were unsure what kind of numbers they would be looking at when in-person instruction detailed above was resumed. After contacting parents who indicated they wished to return to in-person instruction, and giving that opportunity to others who were unsure or preferring distance learning, Student Support Services Director Franklin Day told the board that roughly about 340 students total would be on-campus each day at the district’s five elementary schools.
Those students and the staff working with them will need to undergo extensive health and safety protocols to guide against the spread of the COVID-19 disease. Those include extensive daily screenings just to enter the building – a process that could take about 15 minutes, constant wearing of face coverings, maintaining a minimum of six-fee physical distance and cleaning protocols.
Roettger said these are in accordance with state Department of Health, Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction and Spokane Regional Health District guidelines. The ability for local school districts to begin returning to a partial onsite instruction model came about because of instructions from SRHD Health Officer Dr. Bob Lutz, who said resumption of in-person instruction for younger students was critical in their development and could be accomplished since this population has shown to be less able to transmit the virus – as long as proper precautions are maintained.
“He’s (Lutz) not recommending on thing or another, he’s just working with districts to do things as safely as possible,” Roettger said.
John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.
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