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Board OKs new summer school plan
Tenative dates over two weeks in August, all buildings to be utilized
School Board

MONROE — The School District of Monroe’s Board of Education voted unanimously to approve a recommendation for a tentative, conceptual summer school plan at its meeting April 27 held via Zoom videoconferencing. 

After the announcement from Gov. Tony Evers that schools would be closed for the rest of the school year April 17, a “Badger Bounce Back” plan was released, which provided criteria to allow Wisconsin to reopen its economy in phases. 

Because of that, Monroe schools superintendent Rick Waski said the plan for summer school was limited and the tentative plan will only move forward if the state and the Green County Public Health allow it. Otherwise, the school would look at online credit recovery for high school students only. 

Todd Paradis, Parkside Elementary School principal and summer school supervisor, said the tentative plan is to run summer school over two weeks, from Aug. 10-21. This would allow a one week break for the staff before the regular start of the school year would begin. The two-week program would be a “jumpstart” for students and would be held at each of the school buildings, which is different than how summer school typically runs. Historically, summer school lasts six weeks. 

The format would be half days, Paradis said, and would be held in the morning. They still need to gauge how many teachers and staff members would be willing to work, and more details are needed to move forward with plans.  

“There’s a lot we don’t know yet,” Paradis said.  

The summer school program would run like a half day of school, beginning at 8 a.m. and teachers would provide targeted ELA and math group support to students to help ease them back into “school mode,” Parody said.

Whether or not breakfast and lunch would be provided still hasn’t been worked out. Typically, breakfast and lunch are offered to students in summer school, he said.

Business manager Ron Olson said the school will wait to determine what the food service programming looks like going forward depending on the USDA and what they will continue to provide to schools. 

“Lunch is fluid at this point is the short answer,” Olson said. 

Waski said the high school would look at offering half-credit classes and do some blended learning because of limitations. Students could do some class work online as well as meet in person, depending on what’s allowed at that time. 

“We’re looking at a wide variety (of options) at the high school, but it will depend on staff and who wants to teach,” Waski said. 

Waski said whether or not the two-week summer school tentative plan could even take place by August isn’t completely clear. He said his “level of confidence” of summer school happening at all was “50% at best.” 

If summer school were to be allowed, that means Wisconsin would be in Phase 3 of the “Badger Bounce Back” plan. If it was still in Phase 2, Waski said that could propose several challenges because it would mean allowing 50 or fewer people in the buildings. 

With summer school being offered so late in the summer, Waski said sports could be an issue — assuming they will be allowed to move forward. He said that most coaches would work around schedules if it does happen. 

“If the board is comfortable, let’s approve the plan as indicated. Ultimately, if something comes and we can’t do it — we’ll report to the board,” Waski said. “The reality is … we just don’t know a lot at this point about what kind of restrictions are going to be on schools.”

In other matters, the board:

Administered an Oath of Office to newly elected board of education members before holding an election of officers. The new board president is Rich Deprez; Teresa Keehn will serve as the vice president; Dan Bartholf will be the treasurer; Nikki Matley will stay as the clerk and Jim Plourde was elected as deputy clerk. 

Deprez appointed board member Mary Berger to serve as the Excellence in Education liaison and Nikki Matley to serve as the CESA #2 representative for the School District of Monroe for 2020-21. Both served in those roles previously.