District holding Smart Start meetings to discuss safe reopening

Wrangell School District staff, school board members, and parents have been holding weekly meetings to discuss the safe reopening of Wrangell schools, under the new Smart Start outline provided by the state.

The group held their second meeting Wednesday, June 17, to try and look at some of the bigger questions surrounding getting kids back into school during the COVID-19 pandemic. Superintendent Debbe Lancaster explained, back in a May 18 school board meeting, that Smart Start is meant to be a framework for how districts can plan to operate in the next school year. One of the big topics of discussion in this meeting was what constituted low, medium, and high risk to the Wrangell School District.

During the meeting, participants looked at a draft plan outlining low, medium, and high risk for the Craig City School District. This plan will declare a red/high risk scenario if there have been 10 active COVID-19 cases confirmed on Prince of Wales Island within a 14 day period. In response, the schools will be closed. A yellow/medium risk scenario will be if there are five active cases within a two week period, with all other cases being classified as recovered. The Craig school district will transition to a green/low risk scenario if there are no new COVID-19 cases announced within 14 days, and all cases are recovered.

Teacher, and newly appointed secondary school principal, Bob Davis said he would like to follow Craig's model, but determine Wrangell-specific numbers that better fit the Wrangell community. Penny Allen suggested that Wrangell consider 20 active COVID-19 cases, rather than 10, to be their "high risk" scenario. Meanwhile, low risk would simply mean having no cases. Medium risk, she said, should be how the school operates as normally as possible, with proper precautions in place.Other participants said they would prefer to have some scientific research to back up whatever number they pick.

Community member Kristy Woodbury said she had a few concerns with Craig's plan. Their plan refers to cases in the community, but not cases within the school. She and other participants felt that any case within the school district should require the school in question to close for sanitation and public safety. Staff member Josh Blatchley said that he and his crew could give any of the schools a deep cleaning in approximately 48 hours.

Moving on from discussing risk levels, many participants in the meeting expressed a variety of concerns they had with the upcoming meeting. Lisa Brooks added that she had concerns that a student with COVID-19 posed a risk to any siblings they had, too. Another concern participants brought up was the limited number of substitute employees the district could call on in case of an emergency, especially if some of them were unwilling to risk catching COVID-19.

Another concern some parents and school staff discussed was how socially distancing at school, versus distance learning online, might impact both students and the district. Some parents may choose to just homeschool their kids, rather than send them to school where they will have to socially distance and take other preventative measures. This discussion of low, medium, and high risk, as it turned out, was a moot point.

Lancaster announced in a followup email after the meeting, on Monday, June 22, that Dr. Anne Zink recently announced that the Department of Health and Social Services would help determine Wrangell's community risk level.

Also in her followup email, Lancaster said that according to feedback she received she will try to have two or three talking points prepared for the next meeting, to help keep things focused. They will temporarily be putting an idea of creating subgroups to handle Smart Start on hold, too.

"Please know that the original and continued purpose of this series of meetings is to collect information and suggestions from a variety of stakeholders to be used in formulating our district plan later this summer," Lancaster wrote. "Some recent feedback indicated that a few committee members were feeling overwhelmed at trying to make all of the necessary decisions in the next few weeks. That is not the purpose of the meetings. Please do not stress about all of this. Our trained staff will be integrating your thoughts and ideas into a plan that is best for the health and education of all of our students."

The next Smart Start meeting was scheduled for Wednesday, June 24, at 3 p.m. The plan was to try and meet both in-person, in the elementary school gym, and online.