District hopes school year will be as normal as possible

s the bell rings the start of the new school year, the situation within the county's educational buildings is set to remain largely the same as it stood at the end of May in terms of pandemic guidance. Though signs of social distancing will still be in evidence, Crook County School District is aiming for as normal a school experience as possible.

Good news too for sports fans as the fall season begins: spectators will once again be welcomed in full numbers to every home game.

"Our plan is to go into the school year the same way that we ended our last school year," says Superintendent Mark Broderson.

"We had an exception from [state health officer] Dr. Harrist because of the lack of positive cases in our county, so pretty much everything was not completely back to normal, but close."

Within the buildings, Broderson says, "We will recommend masks and we will provide masks for anybody that wants them. Those masks are recommended to be used in the buildings and on the buses, but they will not be required or mandated."

Meanwhile, "Crook County Public Health is encouraging students and staff that are eligible to get vaccinations, but we're not pushing that by any means."

Hand sanitizers will still be available within the schools and the staff will still encourage hand washing, especially at the elementary. The drinking fountains will still not be in use, but bottle fillers are present in all the district's buildings.

"The cleaning practices that we adopted last year will remain in place," Broderson continues. "We will fog all the buildings two times a week and all of our buses two times a week and we will continue to wipe things down."

It's not impossible to enforce social distancing in a school setting, he says, but it is extremely challenging. With that in mind, social distancing guidelines will be followed to the best of staff members' ability.

"Attendance policies will go back to the way they were. If you're sick, you're sick," Broderson says.

"We were pretty understanding last year with our attendance policies but we're going to go back to what the handbooks say as far as that goes."

Throughout the last school year, a special form of leave for those who tested positive for COVID-19 was made available, and that will remain in place for the time being.

"We will require a positive test result from them and if they are home and not too sick to work or attend class, we will continue to do the virtual platform with our teachers teaching from home or our students learning from home until their quarantine or illness has passed," Broderson says.

"Public Health is not doing the contact tracing any more and our district is also not going to do contact tracing, so if staff and students are feeling ill, we're going to recommend they stay home just like we have always done, and if you have an individual in your family or home that is not doing well they should self-quarantine just like we used to do in the old days when they had the flu – you go to your bedroom and you stay in there."

The situation remains fluid, says the superintendent, but at this time there are no rules preventing the district from welcoming players and spectators alike to the fall season's games. There will be no quotas imposed on the gymnasiums at this time.

"Right now, the Wyoming High School Activities Association has not come out with anything. There's no mask mandate in the state and no health orders to speak of, so we are going to go back to our previous practice," he says.

"I know that Dr. Harrist and Governor Gordon have said they are not going to mandate masks, so I think we're good to go on that"

The same will likely be true for art shows, music performances and plays, although that's not a decision that will need to be made quite yet.

"Luckily for us, we don't have any of those things early in the school year. By the time we get to our first concert, it's probably going to be Veteran's Day that we're looking at," Broderson says.

"We're going to play it by ear and see what the community has for outbreaks and what the count is, but if we're as we are right now, we'll probably open them up."

Broderson met with Crook County Public Health last week to share the district's proposed plan for the new school year.

"They were very in tune with what we are requesting and were easy to work with, so I was very appreciative of that," he says.

The plan was then shared with the CCSD Board of Trustees, and was again met with approval.

"The community has worked well with the district through the challenges to keep our numbers down. We appreciated people working with us and look forward to the continued positive relationship with the communities," Broderson says.

"We feel that our buildings are currently the safest place and the best place for our kids to be."