Superintendent: "School is nuts right now"

Operating a public school during the COVID-19 pandemic isn’t easy, but optimism remains with the COVID incidence rate in Okanogan County being low right now.

As if to underscore the challenges, regional internet service for many went down Tuesday night, right before the Grand Coulee Dam School Board was to meet, via Zoom, to consider whether to partially open in-school teaching.

“Everybody’s totally stressed out, it’s been totally nuts,” Superintendent Paul Turner had said Monday over the phone about the new, currently online-only school year. 

Turner said that the staff is working hard, and doing a good job, but that they have “had to make a big adjustment.”

A delay in getting Google Chromebook laptops for every student added an additional obstacle to the already difficult situation. It means teachers must send home paper packets rather than using the computers in conjunction with the internet or flash drives containing assignments.

“We’re not doing what we hoped to be doing at this point,” Turner said. “It’s stressful on the kids, it’s stressful on the parents, it’s stressful on the staff.” 

Still, optimism remains.

Turner said the low incidence rate presents an opportunity to open school in a more traditional, in-person way sooner than later, and in a way that would allow students and teachers to feel secure there.

Okanogan County has a low, two-week incidence rate of COVID-19 with just 21.1 cases per population of 100,000, according to Sept. 22 data from Okanogan Public Health.

That statistic meets a standard set by health officers from Chelan, Douglas, Grant, Okanogan, and Kittitas counties back in August requiring fewer than 75 cases per 100,000 population for two consecutive weeks in order to reopen schools with a hybrid approach that would use both in-person and distance learning with safety precautions in place.

Okanogan County is also beating the state requirement of fewer than 25 per 100,000 population to move forward a phase in the state’s Safe Start recovery plan.

The school board discouraged Turner’s preferred course when it pressed him in August to decide on a quarterly basis, rather than by monthly decisions, whether to take the next step to open schools to some in-person learning.

But with the county incidence rate at a low point, Turner asked Monday for a special district board Zoom meeting to talk about the possibility of opening up physical school sooner.

The internet outage apparently kept all but one board member, Carla Marconi, from making the online meeting that about 30 others were present online to attend. 

It also nixed a Grand Coulee City Council meeting.

Those meetings are to be rescheduled. The Star will post alerts online when they are — if we still have internet service.