Wearing of masks will be recommended when Warsaw schools start up next month, but they’ll be required on buses and highly encouraged in high-traffic areas.

That’s just part of the Warsaw Community Schools reopening plan Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert laid out Wednesday during the weekly COVID-19 press conference at City Hall.

Plans are available on the WCS website at www.warsawschools.org, with links under “Reopening Plan” and “Forward Together.” Hoffert encouraged people to visit the site, which is updated “almost daily” and has specific key areas.

Indiana Schools closed March 13 due to the coronavirus pandemic. On June 5, the state issued pages and pages of guidance for schools to reopen safely.

Summer School & Graduation

Before moving into the August reopening plan, Hoffert talked about summer school and the graduation plans for the Class of 2020.

The first session of summer school was for secondary students and started Monday. “It has been very successful to this point,” Hoffert said. “... It’s been very positive. It’s been great to see smiling faces from students.”

He said it’s required masks be worn on buses, and 95% of the students were prepared for that on the first day. The other 5% were given masks by the bus drivers.

“It was not an argument,” he said, adding that students were “incredibly professional” and made masks personal statements.

Just under 200 secondary students were involved in summer school, along with summer band. Sports teams, under IHSAA guidance, started practice Monday.

“Their biggest goal, they know, is to do everything inside of our power to have a season. That means that we have to be safe, that means we need to take precautions and that means we need to be doing the right things. Our coaches, our teachers, our athletes are taking that very, very seriously inside of their steps to be able to make sure things are able to be opened up safely,” Hoffert said.

The elementary summer school session starts July 20.

Graduation for the Class of 2020 is scheduled to be in-person at 7:30 p.m. July 17. Hoffert said they are working under Gov. Eric Holcomb’s reopening plan 4.5 to make sure that there are safe venues set up for the outdoor graduation. It is a ticket, limited event with each student provided two tickets. Guests will be socially distanced in the bleachers, with students socially distanced on the football field.

“Extra precautions are being taken to make sure this is a safe event,” Hoffert said.

Anyone who has health concerns or illnesses, anytime that there is a gathering of individuals is encouraged to not attend. The graduation will be livestreamed, and an intent to participate is being sent out to students to determine who will be participating.

Registration & Online Option

Registration for the 2020-21 school year is very important, Hoffert said.

“Right now, we are sitting at probably about 60 to 70% registration, which is very normal for this time of the school year,” he said, noting they had about 460 kindergartners registered. “That is almost the same exact number that we had this time last year. We usually end up somewhere between 525 to 550, is a normal class size within Warsaw Community Schools.”

While that indicates the registration process is working, he said for WCS to really understand the landscape, WCS needs parents to go online and register through the PowerSchool portal. It takes about 30 seconds.

Parents who have not yet registered will receive personal phone calls this week and next from Central Administration staff.

The school system is opening the physical setting in August, but will offer an online option.

“The online option is predominantly for students that have physical, at-risk conditions coming back into the school setting or for extenuating circumstances that would keep a student from coming back and feeling at ease inside of that physical setting,” Hoffert said.

There are limitations to the online format and it will not look like it did after the schools shut down March 13 because most teachers will go back to the physical setting.

“So they won’t be able to spend that intensive time on online learning,” he said. “That being said, we learned a lot through that process and through our remote learning and eLearning schedules that we’ve had.”

For elementary students, the online learning will be focused on English language arts (ELA) and math, with some supplemental materials in other areas.

At the middle school, online learning will focus on science, social studies, math and ELA. Hoffert said it probably would be a combination of teacher-recorded videos and WCS’s online schooling that’s already in place.

For high schoolers, online learning will mostly be through APEX and Indiana Online Academy. “It will be limited course offerings. It won’t be some of the electives that are out there,” Hoffert said.

If a student does online learning, he said the student won’t be able to participate in extracurriculars and clubs. The online learning is an alternative learning but won’t have some of the options of the in-classroom physical setting.

If someone chooses the online option for their student, Hoffert said they’ll be asked to commit to it for at least nine weeks or maybe a semester. There won’t be movement between the online and physical.

If a student becomes ill with COVID-19 while in the physical classroom, they could be moved to the online option while quarantined and then moved back to the classroom once the quarantine is over. That is different than if a student is registered for the online option full-time.

Hoffert said more information will be forthcoming. He asked people to check the school’s website and social media regularly for updates, and look for a new mobile app soon.

Health & Safety Protocols

Posters provided by Hoffert at Wednesday’s press conference lists nine simple protocols that could make a big difference this upcoming school year.

Visitors will be very limited within the school setting due to the COVID-19 exposure factor. There will be no large convocations like in the past, but more digital formats when students gather. Volunteers won’t be scheduled until “further down the road,” Hoffert said.

When it comes to training, he said WCS will work with its staff to help identify COVID symptoms, as well as sanitizing and hygiene procedures.

Hand washing will be put in the schedule, making sure students wash their hands before and after lunch and recess.

When a student might have symptoms, Hoffert said the student will be separated into an isolated area while their parents come and pick them up. “The less contact they have with other individuals, the better it is,” he said.

Recess and restroom and lunch breaks will be scheduled by classes and groups. “We still have to make sure some things happen within schools. Recess is one of them. Students need recess. So how can we limit exposure as much as possible by having recess?” he said, adding students need art, music and physical education as much as can be provided safely. “Students need interaction with other students.”

Hoffert said WCS will limit cross-exposure with other groups of students as much as possible by keeping grade levels together, students together and through rotations.

There will be a lot more seating charts this year to help limit cross-exposure. That will take place in the classroom, cafeteria and on the bus. On the bus, siblings will be seated together, and in the classroom, space will be maximized as much as possible.

The biggest question Hoffert said they’ve received is about masks in the school setting. He said it’s been an ongoing conversation with Kosciusko County Health Department Public Health Officer Dr. William Remington and County Communicable Disease nurse Teresa Reed.

“We are going to be requiring students on the bus to wear a mask. We highly recommend that students do bring a mask, and we highly encourage them, that especially in high-traffic areas, that they utilize those masks,” Hoffert said. High-traffic areas could include the cafeteria and hallways. He said in the hallways students will be within 6 feet of each other but not for 15 continuous minutes.

Hoffert acknowledged that there will be areas and times where masks will not be highly feasible.

The Center for Disease Control guidelines state that drinking fountains are high-contamination areas so WCS is shutting theirs down. “But what that means is we’ve been installing bottle fillers in a lot of our schools in recent years,” Hoffert said. They are contactless and are already installed in a number of areas, with more to be installed. In areas without bottle fillers, since drinking fountains will be shut down, the school district will be putting up different alternative water sources to keep students hydrated throughout the day.

Hoffert encouraged parents to send their students to school every day with a filled-up water bottle. They don’t have to be fancy bottles, he said, and some PTOs are stepping up to provide some to students.

The last of the nine health and safety protocols is parent expectations. “We can not do this without the support of our local community and without the support of our parents,” Hoffert said. “That really means our parents are monitoring the health of their children and they’re helping us with that information.”

He said it wasn’t feasible for the school corporation to monitor students’ temperatures as they walk into the school building, nor onto the bus. “It is feasible to ask parents to please monitor those health symptoms before their student ever leaves the door, and that is going to be the most critical piece in stopping the spread,” Hoffert said.

Along with providing their students with water bottles, parents can also make sure they have masks and personal bottles of hand sanitizer.

Classroom & School Environment Changes

P.E. will be held outdoors when possible.

Until things change, there will be no external field trips or convocations until further notice. Learning will still take place, but it will look different.

Outdoor learning trips will be permitted, but large group time will be minimized.

Each school will notify parents regarding back-to-school events. They will be digital as much as possible.

In the classrooms for the elementary schools, students will remain in their homeroom to minimize contact.

Physical changes may be made to create more personal space such as moving desks and furniture at both elementary and secondary levels. Supply sharing also will be minimized.

At the elementaries, each classroom will have a designated staggered recess.

At both levels, large spaces throughout the building will be available for teachers to use “probably more so than they ever have before,” Hoffert said.

All points are subject to change due to local or state health emergency mandates.

Sims & Reichenbach

Terry Sims, Warsaw Community Education Association president, and Heather Reichenbach, Warsaw School Board president, attended Wednesday’s press conference with Hoffert.

Sims thanked the county health department for its “invaluable” help and the school corporation for inviting WCEA to work on the reopening plan. The WCEA represents over 400 members.

“We endorse this plan. We were part of the plan, so we should, right? We endorse this part without exception,” Sims said.

He said he’s been “very clear” in his communication with the WCEA members about the importance of wearing a mask. He thanked everyone involved with the plan and said it’s very important.

Reichenbach said the information that Hoffert shared Wednesday was something everyone was waiting for and everyone was wondering what it would look like.

“Our delay in releasing any of the information has not been from lack of wanting to, but merely because we’re waiting for executive orders and more clarity as to what the situation looks like and what it will look like as we get closer to the school year starting,” she said. “We want to make sure that the information that we’re giving we feel confident in sharing and hopefully won’t be moving back and forth because we all like a little consistency.”

Q & A

The press conference ended with about a half hour of questions and answers from local media.

During a school year, if a high percentage (about 20%) of students/staff are out sick with influenza, schools or entire school districts may close their doors for a period of time to let them recover and to contain the spread of the flu. If 20% of Warsaw students are out this upcoming school year because of COVID-19, Hoffert was asked if school doors would close.

“Really what we’re looking at is individual students right now and what that impact would be and how isolated are those specific groups. Again, what was the exposure factor? Is it community transmission that has taken place inside the classroom? Is it one classroom that needs to be shut? Is it an entire school that needs to be shut, or is it a community issue altogether?” Hoffert said, to which Reed agreed. “So what we have learned, very quickly, is that everything is almost a case-by-case basis. Right now, our biggest goal is to be pre-emptive to keep any of those from happening. We don’t want to see any classrooms have to get shut down. We don’t want to see any schools have to get shut down. So our goal is to put all these preventative measures in place, that we’re outlining today, to try to minimize those types of risks.”

He said other countries that have reopened schools have been successful.

Reed said, “One of the goals of these plans ... is that it lets us go in and look at a specific situation. If John came back positive, who is around, who was in close contact with Johnny? And then those students would be quarantined. So we may have classes in place, schools may be in place, but sometimes there’s going to be more absences than there would normally be because of that removal of those close contacts if there is a confirmed case in an area.”