Many residents have had questions about the upcoming Garretson school year, and when and whether or not it will be open for business as usual this fall.
Although it wasn’t a specific line item of discussion in the Garretson School Board’s agenda on the night of Monday, July 13, it was discussed a few times throughout the meeting and during the Superintendent’s Report and briefing to the board.
“A lot of people are wondering one what’s going to happen this year, and whether or not the school will open on time,” said Supt. Guy Johnson at the meeting Monday night. “People want guidance and want to know what our plan is, because there is a lot of uncertainty right now. We don’t have a concrete plan as of right now, but we’re are working on one.”
“It’s really unfortunate that this issue has become so political. One side is driving the school to open for business as usual. The other side seems determined that we not open at all. As educators, we’re caught in the middle. We know that students need teachers and teachers need students, and there are things we can do to open our school up with the health and safety of our students and staff as our highest priority.”
“Flexibility is going to be the key word this year,” he said. “Our staff showed how flexible they can be at the start of all these troubles and flexibility this coming year will be more important than ever. We’re all going to have to be flexible. Our initial plan as of right now is to open, face to face with our students with as many precautions as we can reasonably take. This week we’ re going to meet with staff members representing each grade level and decide how we’re going to handle this thing. We’ll take this step by step, with caution. What works for one classroom, may not work for another classroom. And what works for Garretson, won’t necessarily work in Sioux Falls or vice versa. However, we and every other district in the state will be working and sharing information of what does work with each other.”
“A lot of the decisions that will have to be made will be done right here by this board,” said Shannon Nordstrom. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as I’ m confident we can make the right judgments to keep our students and staff safe.”
During the course of the meeting, several items of interest came up related to this topic. As an example, infrared thermometers have been purchased for each elementary classroom to be used periodically throughout the day.
“We’re confident we can open safely and we’ re going to go to teachers grade by grade with the initial plan from the administration offices which they will and should poke holes into. With that we can form better plans and go forward, because I can guarantee they’ ll think of things we hadn’t thought of. We’ll do all of this with a mind to responsibility and safety, and do everything in our power to get our kids in the building and get education happening again.”
Supt. Johnson reported that the ESSER federal funds have come through to support the summer-long lunch program that the school has been providing. However, he also noted that the GEER grants from the State of South Dakota have as yet failed to launch.
“The GEER (Governor’s Emergency Education Relief fund), was to be a competitive grant application system that schools could apply to offset additional costs because of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Supt. Johnson said. “However, this program has so far failed to launch. The application process hasn’t even started and we can’t even get an application document as of yet. As an example, those thermometers that were mentioned are an additional expense that could be covered by the grant, but we can’t get reimbursed if we can’t apply. Also, earlier we talked about lunchroom tables. Right now, we seat eight kids to a table, and under the current circumstances that’s probably not a good idea. So, we need more lunchroom tables. Well, if I ordered those today they aren’t just going to materialize by the start of the school year. Things take time to arrange, so we need this sooner rather than later.”
Though masks were not discussed, half of the present board members were wearing them at the meeting, as well as all of the three members of the public who were there for the meeting. Board members were distanced at least six feet apart along with the audience. The recent City Council meeting had zero masks worn at their recent in-person meeting, nor were councilors distanced more than four feet apart.
Nordstrom mentioned that he’ d received a news update on his phone that people were protesting the Sioux Falls school board meeting. Tony Martens asked what they were protesting about. Nordstrom replied that he wasn’t sure, but that he guessed it was that the school be opened for students. In fact, the Argus Leader and KELO reported that the protests at the Instructional Learning Center were by the teachers, because they were requesting that the proposed Sioux Falls school districts’ “Return to Learning” plans change from masks being “highly recommended” to “required.” Masks have remained highly contentious, as early guidelines recommended against mask-wearing, partly to protect medical workers from personal protective equipment shortages. However, as more evidence became available that Sars-CoV-2 was likely spread by airborne particles from those who are asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic, the CDC revised its guidelines to encourage covering the nose, mouth, and even eyes to help prevent the spread of the virus.
The full report of the Garretson School Board meeting will be in next week’s paper.
