Lind-Ritzville School District to move forward in Back to School plan

RITZVILLE – School board members approved a proposal for the school district to move forward to Stage 5 in their back to school plan, at the Jan. 26 board meeting.

While not a full-scale re-opening, Stage 5 brings all grade levels on to campus Monday through Thursday.

“This approval comes with the realization that local health conditions and/or school-related infections or transmission rates may necessitate a delay in this forward step,” Superintendent Don Vanderholm said in a press release Jan. 28. “We will do our best to provide advance notice of any delay(s), but advise you to prepare for the possibility of short notice, just as you would for a “snow-day.”

Vanderholm said detailed information on the logistics of Stage 5 will be provided by the middle and high school principals.

Currently in Stage 4, elementary students attend four days a week, while freshmen and sophomores attend Mondays and Wednesdays; and juniors and seniors attend Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Ritzville School Board Chair Marci Miller said in Stage 5, the cohorts (grouping of students) would not be as specific as it is in Stage 4.

“Right now, students come as a class and stay pretty much together the entire day,” Miller said. “When we bring everybody in, we’ll go back to more of a regular schedule; but still with the large blocks, kind of like a hybrid-cohort, so to speak. Instead of changing classes every hour, they’re in there for almost two hours and just doing the four periods a day. So it’s a little bit more controlled, but still with everybody there.”

Lind School Board voted unanimously to approve it, and on the Ritzville board, everyone except Scott Carruth was in favor.

Vanderholm proposed moving to Stage 5 on Feb. 16. Miller said with the three-day school week due to President’s Day off on Monday, and Fridays reserved for students who need extra help, “it gives us a three-day launch.”

Vanderholm also said he chose the mid-February date to give teachers and students time to prepare for the transition.

The decision came following a presentation at the board meeting by Dr. Alexander Brzezny, contracted as the Adams County Health Officer. Brzezny said he was concerned about increasing rates of COVID-19.

“Your school experiment is under the biggest threat it has ever been. With the growing rate, activities at school will promote that,” Brzezny said, adding “We are expecting a new variant in the next four weeks, and the new variants are more infectious. School districts should be reducing the opportunities for spread, not increasing them. You cannot do extracurricular sports if you say you cannot do cohorts in sports. Ritzville has generally done better than the rest of the county, but that is no longer the case. We trace disease for a living, this is what we do. The upcoming variant is more easily spread among children, not from what we are seeing in the state, but from areas including L.A. and outside the states, in European communities.”

“We waited through Thanksgiving and Christmas, with the rate going up, and we have no cases to report right now in our student body,” Vanderholm said.

“That’s because what you are doing is working,” Brzezny said. “Stick with your program, because it is working for you.”

Vanderholm made the proposal to move forward with caveats in place to monitor the situation, stating he was not trying to rebut what the health officer reported.

“It’s a tough decision, and the emotional health of our students weighs heavily on my mind,” Vanderholm said. “I don’t feel anyone pressuring me to move forward, but I feel the pressure from the students to move forward.”

Vanderholm opened the meeting up to questions at that point, but nobody spoke up. Several individuals in the online audience made requests over the chat tool to move to stage 5, stating kids need to be back in school.

The next school board meeting is Wednesday, Feb. 24 at 6:30 p.m. The call-in number to access the online meeting will be posted on the school district website.