GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – As the Green Bay Area Public School District surpasses 1,600 students and staff out of school due to COVID-related isolations and quarantines, nobody is sounding the alarm quite yet.
Two weeks into the year, officials continue keeping a close eye on the spread of COVID-19 in schools. Green Bay Schools Communications Director Lori Blakeslee says they’re focused more on the actual number of kids testing positive than contact-initiated quarantines and percentages.
“That’s going to tell us – [are] our masking and mitigation measures are working? Or are we seeing spread of the virus?” Blakeslee said. “It remains relatively low when you think about the number of isolations versus the total number of students in the district.”
The district has seen about 150 positive cases so far. The total student population is about 19,000. Right now, 97 students are isolated – meaning they’re either symptomatic and awaiting results or have received positive test.
Despite that relatively low number of positive cases, the district is still taking precautions with quarantining students who may have been exposed for ten days. In some instances, that means an entire class might have to shift to virtual learning for a period of time.
“There’s a one day opportunity there for the teachers to work to transitioning over to virtual instruction. So for that one day, students will have material on Google classroom they’ll be able to work on for that day on their own,” Blakeslee explained. “There’s a plan that’s developed between the teaching staff and the family as to what’s going to work for each family…there’s a way in which instructions provided so that students are falling behind after those 10 days. At the secondary level, they are providing opportunities for the teachers to have cameras on in their classroom so that students can still listen in to the instruction, but they’re also on Google classroom getting their assignments and all those pieces.”
The other thing to note is that quarantines are cumulative as students are counted in that number for the stretch of time they’re home.
Despite Brown County sitting in the ‘very high’ category for COVID transmission, there is still optimism.
“Hopefully as we see COVID cases diminish in our community, we’ll hopefully see that reflected on our dashboard as well,” Blakeslee said.
You can keep track of cases on a daily basis through the district’s dashboard.
