Neillsville District Administrator Discusses Impact of Coronavirus on the School District

Tuesday, December 1st, 2020 -- 11:20 AM

-The coronavirus continues to run rampant through the country, state and even here in Clark County.

I spoke with John Gaier, the District Administrator of the Neillsville School District, and he discussed some of the impacts Clark County has seen due to COVID-19.

Question:  “We’ve been talking about this a lot, but can you reiterate the impact the district has seen because of the coronavirus, especially the past month or so with the drastic increase in cases?”

Mr. Gaier:  “It has certainly been an impact.  And the biggest impact has been to our schedule.  We have kids in grade 7-12 attend in-person school two days a week in cohorts to keep the numbers down each of the days that they are here.  And we are going 4 days a week in grades 5K-6th.  So, that schedule is probably the biggest impact that we’ve had.  We’ve been fortunate, to date the number of positive cases that have impacted us, as far as the number of students and staff that have been positive, have been pretty low.  And they are on our dashboard on our website, so I encourage people to go check those out all of the time.  I think the bigger impact than our positive cases are the number of positive cases that either our staff or kids have been close contacts to outside of the school building, which keeps them out of school for up to 14 days.  So, even though are number of positive cases in the school itself is low, the number of students or staff impacted as being close contacts can become a relatively high number.”

Question:  “You kind of already touched on this, but we obviously worry about the students getting COVID, but it’s also the teachers.  A lot of districts are having issues with being able to staff their districts.  Especially if the teachers end up catching the coronavirus or are close contacts with someone who has the virus.  Can you talk about that particular challenge?”

Mr. Gaier:  “We do have some gating metrics that we’ve used that have come from the county Health Department about when to potentially close down.  And those gating metrics are that if we have 20% of our kids absent for 5 consecutive days we would close for 14 days.  If we had an absentee rate of 50% for a day we would close for 14 days.  And if we can’t staff the building, we would have to close under those conditions as well.  We have not hit any of those metrics, so, knock on wood, we’ve been able to stay open during this time.”

“But we have had to be very flexible with how we are able to provide education when staff are gone.  We have had some teachers that have been positive and/or have been close contacts with someone that has been positive, so they had to be out of school.  However, they were either asymptomatic or never became ill as close contacts.  So, through technology, we can actually have those teachers live connect into their classrooms, be projected on smartboards in the classroom, and our teachers actually teach remotely from home.  So, we have the actual teacher connecting with the kids those days.  We use teaching assistants in the room to make sure kids are behaving and monitoring what kids are doing.  And that has worked really well and I really have to give a lot of credit to our staff for their ability to use technology to connect and keep our full time teacher engaged with kids even when they can’t physically be here during these times.”

“So, the flexibility that we are using and that the teachers have come up with to continue to educate the kids while kids are gone, by connecting with them remotely, or when teachers have to be out and them connecting remotely has worked really well.  And I really appreciate the flexibility of teachers covering for other teachers that have to be out.  And I also have to give a shout out to the substitutes that are willing to come in and substitute for the teachers that have to be out as well.  So, that has been the impact.  But necessity has become the mother of invention and our staff has really handled the situation well so far and I think our kids have benefited because of it.”

Question:  “You talked about the mixed schedule, but what are some of the other things the district has done to help combat the virus in regards to items like mask usage, etc.?”

Mr. Gaier:  “We’re following all the protocols the Health Department has given us and the CDC has recommended.  We’re wearing masks.  We’re trying to stay socially distanced as much as we possibly can in the building.  We’re doing all kinds of disinfecting of any high touch areas, of all classroom areas, of all large areas that need to be sanitized.  We’re doing all of those things and, knock on wood, we have been very fortunate.  We have not been able to identify any cases where any folks that we have identified as close contacts here have ever become ill because they caught the virus.  So, we think that masking and social distancing and sanitizing has worked very well for us.  And hopefully it continues to work.”

“We’re talking about numbers that are just exploding in our area and that will have an impact on us.  Not necessarily that it will get into the building, but it may keep kids out because they are close contacts with people that are positive in our community area.  So, we’ll continue to monitor that as much as we possibly can.  Our goal is to try and stay open so we can take some of the pressure off the families and continue to have our kids learn because we know they learn best when they are here.  So, we’ll continue to do those things and I highly recommend that everybody follows those same safety protocols outside of school because what happens in our area will definitely impact what happens in our school.”

Question:  “Something that people tend to bring up when it comes to coronavirus related school closures is learning loss.  Is that something that you and the board and the district as a whole has discussed at all?”

Mr. Gaier:  “It certainly is.  One of the things that we have done is increased the length of classes for grades 7-12, so that, on the days that they are here, they are with a teacher of a certain subject longer than they normally would have been in our schedule that we used last year.  So, that is one thing that we’ve done.  Because of the smaller groups, teachers have indicated that they have been able to move more quickly through curriculum items that they have used in the past.  So, they are seeing some acceleration in learning because of the extended time and because of the smaller groups.”

“But, frankley, it is impossible for any educator to say that with the reduced time in front of a teacher that there isn’t going to be some learning loss.  We can do things remotely.  We can offer things the very best that we can, in some cases, but I don’t think there’s any substitute for kids being in front of professional educators in the same classroom and having the dialogue and the instruction and the conversation that happens in a classroom.  Hopefully, we can get back to that.  We will do everything we can to catch kids up once the threat of this virus is gone.  But our goal is to keep kids both emotionally safe and physically safe while trying to get them as much education as we possibly can.”

Question:  “When it comes to contact tracing, do you work with the Health Department or is that something the school tackles on its own?”

Mr. Gaier:  “Honestly, one of the things that has been incredibly impressive to me is how willing parents are to share information with us.  Very often, we get information about a positive case or close contacts, potential close contacts, before the Health Department does.  But we have a line of communication open with the Health Department so we are constantly having conversation back and forth of identifying people.  But we are doing a lot of the close contact tracing.  And because of the explosion, the Health Department, honestly, is having a hard time keeping up with notifying all the positive cases and doing all the close contacting tracing.  So, we are taking on more and more responsibility here at the school of getting the close contact information to the Health Department and actually us doing the communication to the families of people that are identified as close contacts in the district that we know.  So, we are working closely with the Health Department and we are trying to help them out as much as we can during this increase of the coronavirus being spread through community spread and we are taking on more of a responsibility of being the contacts to families about students or staff that may be close contacts because of a case.”

Question:  “One of the things the district has done this year is approving the calendar and operational plan from month to month.  Is December’s looking similar to the other months that have been approved so far this year?”

Mr. Gaier:  “Yes, the recommendation for the December plan will be very much like the plans in the past.  We hoped that, at some point, we would be able to get kids back more frequently than the cohort model or the 4 days a week for grades 5K-6th.  However, with the number of cases in our area, that is just not feasible at this time.  And I think it will be a lot like the November plan.  And, hopefully, post Thanksgiving and post Christmas, when there’s some fear about the amount of travel and the large group gatherings that may occur, that we don’t see the increase in cases that some are anticipating.”

Question:  “With our increase in numbers here in Clark County and around the state and even the nation.  Moving forward, if things don’t change, can you predict where the Neillsville district will be in a couple months if things continue to go the way they’re going?”

Mr. Gaier:  “I think that a lot of it depends on a lot of things outside of the school.  A lot of things depend on are there going to be some efforts to control the virus in our county and in our state and in our communities?  How quickly is a vaccine going to be available?  There’s been a lot of good news about the development of a vaccine.  So, we don’t know exactly when that would become available.  Treatment for COVID is continually getting better.  Although our healthcare facilities, I know, are just overwrought right now with all of the cases they’re trying to deal with.  So, it’s really going to depend on a lot of efforts outside the school to see what’s going to happen that allows us to get back more full time then we have in the past.  We know it works.  There’s no doubt that masking works.  There’s no doubt that social distancing works.  There’s no doubt that sanitizing works.  I don’t think that can be debated anymore.  And the more that we use that, I think, the more we can help reduce the spread.  So, a lot of that, again, depends on what folks are willing to do outside of the school because what happens outside of the school in our area is going to impact what happens in the school.”

Question:  “Is there anything else you’d like our listeners to know that we may not have already touched on?”

Mr. Gaier:  “I think the most important thing is to continue to keep lines of communication open.  We have to be open and honest about what’s going on so that we can control this virus as much as we can.  And that I really appreciate how open and willing to share information from our families to the school and between the school and the Health Department has been managed.  I’m greatly appreciative of everybody’s efforts to communicate these things and just continue to support one another by following all the safety protocols and helping get this under control so, number one, we can relieve the stress that our healthcare facilities are now under as we move forward and just to continue to see what’s going on at the school and be willing to ask questions of us, if they have any questions, about future plans or anything that we can help answer for them.”

Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.