We continue our saga of the 11/23/2020 AASD Board of Education meeting. After public input was logged, AASD’s chief financial officer, Greg Hartjes, reviewed some background information related to the matrix to change between educational models.
The Learning Model Re-evaluation Matrix has 3 primary criteria indicators and 4 secondary criteria indicators. The main 3 are based on the CDC model and the secondary criteria are based on the DHS model.
Primary Criteria
(1) The ability to implement key mitigation strategies (this would be things like social distancing, mask-wearing, sanitizing, contact tracing, etc). AASD feels we have and continue to successfully implement these strategies for students who are in school.
The other two indicators overlap.
(2) The Burden for the City of Appleton.
(3) The Burden for the tri-county region.
The Burden for Appleton remains at the highest risk level, but has remained flat at approximately 1,100 for the past 6 weeks. The burden for the tri-county region has been over 1,000 for the past 8 weeks which is also considered in the highest level, but it has seen a decrease since mid October when there was a high of 1,300–down to about 1,000 last week.
Secondary Criteria
(1) The composite for Appleton which is the combination of both the burden and trajectory. AASD believes this is important because it also includes the trajectory. The composite number remains very high but, at the same time, has not been increasing. Both burden and trajectory have been flat for the past 6 weeks.
(2) The composite for the tri-county region. This is also very high, but the trajectory has either stayed the same or has been shrinking over the past 5 weeks.
The final 2 criteria pertain to staffing needs.
(3) Staffing of certified educators. This remains at 99%
(4) Staffing of substitutes. The substitute pool has increased from 52% to 57% compared to their pool last year; however, not all of the subs are currently taking jobs that are offered. They’re not sure if these substitutes are waiting to be in-person or if they just aren’t planning to take jobs this year even though they indicated that they were.
Gary Janke wanted to know how often substitutes were unavailable when needed.
Per Julie King That was going to be covered in-depth in their staffing report later in the meeting.
Deb Truyman mentioned that she had originally asked for an agenda item to review the learning model, however, she pulled that request because she understood that there’s going to be a meeting between parent physicians, administrators, and city health officials and she hopes that once that meeting happens there will be more information to help them review the learning model. She’s hoping that in the near future they’ll be able to actually look at what the criteria are since they do have a lot more information about the cases and how it actually affects students in school.
Barry O’Connell pointed out that we’re not very close to what would be the target on the matrix. He wanted to know how the 7 different items on the matrix were weighted/prioritized.
He also said that a lot of the universities are being quite successful in controlling Covid on their campuses by using very intensive testing. UW Oshkosh and UW Madison the two that he knows of. He wondered if that is a mitigation strategy AASD should consider. Is it something they are able to do? How well would they be able to test and how quickly could they get results back? [I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch here to think that, if feasible, Barry would like to see mandatory testing when AASD returns to in-person education.]
Per Greg Hartjes, the CDC guidelines state that there is no weighting to any of the categories. In addition to the 7 different items on the matrix. The matrix includes an addendum that says they have to look at the social, emotional, and academic success of our students in our current model. There is no specific number or series of numbers they have to reach in order to switch between learning models. They are taking a qualitative approach to information that they have. [On a practical level this doesn’t actually make sense to me. Realistically, there may not be any formal weighting to the different categories, but whoever ends up making the call to switch between models is going to view some areas as more important than others.]
In regards to testing, they have the tracker information on all staff and also students who are getting in-person services. That info has to be taken into consideration also in addition to the other factors.
Polly VandenBoogart had several school nurses join the leadership team meeting on 11/23 and they talked about testing.
Per Polly, they had a small group of school nurses who have been researching the different antigen testing and how that could be used as a mitigation strategy (as surveillance within the schools vs. as a diagnostic test). They’ve reached out to UW Oshkosh, UW Green Bay, and other companies to find out what surveillance testing could look like within AASD. That work is in progress in terms of potential next steps.
Barry was pleased with that. According to him, someone who is a leader of the testing at UW Oshkosh is a parent within AASD, so Barry would be interested in getting his thoughts on the matter.
Barry reiterated that he’s uncomfortable not weighting the different criteria and not requiring that the area burden reach a certain level before schools start opening up again. He was concerned about going to in-person instruction when the burden was over 1,000 [the DHS minimum for a very high burden is 350]. He didn’t know how much mitigation and how much tracking the district is capable of doing and whether that is able to track/control the infection rate of, often asymptomatic, children. He thought that needed to be examined very carefully at a future meeting.
[I certainly find it interesting that AASD has been discussing using testing as surveillance, and I am curious how they would plan to implement that should they choose to go forward with it.]
You can view the entire meeting here: https://youtu.be/-H-2LJ8eOAU
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