By John McLoone

The Hastings School Board got briefed at a work session last Wednesday night on how the coming school year is shaping up. Superintendent Dr. Robert McDowell led the board through a number of topics at the meeting: Central to the coming school year is communication.

“The Raider Update came out today. That’s our weekly update, whether we have a small amount of information or a large amount of information. Our plan is at this point to have that out after today on every Sunday for families and staff so that people will have an update coming into the week,” said McDowell. “We’re hoping that that’ll be a way for people not only to get information right away but also to direct them to our website which is the second thing. So we’re working a lot on communication. If you haven’t had a chance, check out our updated website our Bridge to Learning 2020 website. We’re starting to populate all the buttons on there with what we believe are the important things for our families and students and us as school board members to be able to have quick access to as we move through COVID.”

Interest has been high in the district’s “online academy,” said McDowell.

“We right now, as of today, are at 454 students and that breaks down to 238 elementary students, 54 middle school students and 162 high school students right now,” he said.

It’s changing everyday. It’s kind of that chicken and egg thing. We need to know who we have signed up so we can plan for staffing appropriately and families need to know what’s the game plan so they can plan appropriately.”

More information was expected at the end of last week on the district cohort plans – keeping students grouped together and with the same groups every school day. He said that transportation opt-out information was supposed to have been received by the district by the end of the week so busing plans can take shape.

The district is working on getting additional crossing guards at four different places for students who need to cross Hwy. 55 and Hwy. 61 as more students will be walking to school..

“So we do have a plan in place for that as well,” he said.

McDowell said face shields have been ordered for staff members, as well as masks have been ordered. “Today we ordered four pallets of hand sanitizer, so every room in a school is going to have plenty of hand sanitizer, and that ties into what’s our first line of defense. We all know that it’s washing hands, keeping clean and having hand sanitizer, so that’ll be one thing that will happen in our classrooms. Every time you enter a classroom, it’s going to be an expectation that you’re sanitizing your hands,” he said.

Teachers will also have disinfectant spray to use.

“Every teacher is going to have a bottle of this so that they have it to use when they need to use it, which is kind of our second ladder of defense in mitigating risk in our classrooms so that teachers and staff can spray down areas as they need to. And they don’t need to go searching for a custodian to do that.

He told the board, “That lead me into just a reminder of what does our risk mitigation from a cleaning standpoint look like we’ve got the hand cleaning going on. We are socially distancing in all of our buildings. You know we’re putting kids into cohorts. We are minimizing the movement throughout the building to include lunch periods….Every classroom of course will be cleaned up at the end of the day, and then on Wednesdays is when we’ll do deep cleaning in all of our buildings and then again on Friday, Saturday or whatever that schedule looks like.

“We’re trying to do as much as we can to help people stay safe,” he said.

A lengthy discussion was held on elementary school plans and what the elementary schedule looks like, and McDowell was questioned about music and arts programs. He said principals are “working with the music teachers and the music teachers are actually the ones stepping up right now to figure out how do we connect with the kids who are in the program and we want to do this and what can we do to make it work.

“I think it’s going to take a little bit of time for those teachers to really figure out how we do this in a way that makes sense for all of our kids,” said McDowell.

A question was raised about what happens if a student doesn’t wear a mask, McDowell said that unlike a business, the school can require a reason why.

“We can require that a student or family provide us a medical reason for why they’re not wearing a mask,” he said. “While we can require it, we can’t force it.”

The state guidance from the governor’s office says, according to McDowell, “that you cannot necessarily call out a student for not having a mask on, meaning their guidance is they would recommend you don’t go down the road of suspending a student for not wearing a mask. You can’t require a student to go to distance learning because they’re not wearing a mask. You can’t do things like that.”

“We’re no different from any other district in the state. We are in a situation where I would stay – and I answered this question for a few teachers today – you may have a student in your classroom that isn’t wearing a mask. That is a possibility. On the teacher side of it, we could have employees that don’t wear a mask,” he said. “We’re in this together. And like I said at our last board meeting, I’d go a step further, because I think the term ‘safe’ and keeping people safe are misleading. We’re mitigating risk. How do we best mitigate risk in a situation that we know we can’t control all of? The way we mitigate risk in this situation is to help our students best to understand that the way we care for one another is by wearing a mask.”