Greensburg Salem cites limited space in ruling out full-time return to classrooms

Eighty percent of the 889 Greensburg Salem parents who responded to a recent district survey said they want their children to spend part of each week receiving in-person lessons from their teachers, once classes resume Aug. 26.

The remainder said they would opt for full-time remote learning from home amid the uncertainties of the covid-19 pandemic.

Superintendent Gary Peiffer told more than 500 people who logged on for a Thursday night webinar on Greensburg Salem’s school reopening plan that another scenario — a return to full-time, in-person instruction — isn’t possible under the social distancing requirements set forth by state education and health officials.

The school board is expected to vote on the reopening plan at its Aug. 12 meeting.

“We’d prefer to have everybody here (in school), but we want to be able to do it safely,” Peiffer said. “Other schools are going (in-person) five days a week, but they may have bigger rooms and some of them have more staff.”

A typical Greensburg Salem classroom can accommodate no more than 15 students while maintaining the minimum 6 feet distance between any two of them, Peiffer said.

That’s why the district is proposing a hybrid instructional model that will cut building occupancy by students in half, dividing them into two groups. Each group will attend in-person classes two days per week and will spend the remaining three learning remotely at home.

All students will participate in virtual lessons on Wednesday, a day that will be devoted to stepped-up cleaning of schools.

Families that don’t feel safe sending their children back into classrooms can choose full-time online learning, though Peiffer said the hybrid version gives teachers more opportunities to assist students who need extra academic help. “It’s that frequency of contact on a weekly basis,” he said.

District administrators responded to questions residents submitted before and during the webinar.

Some wanted to know about the district’s mask policy. Peiffer said students will be required to wear the face coverings while riding school buses, and everyone, including faculty members, must wear them on school property except when eating.

“I do think it’s hard to wear masks the whole day,” he acknowledged. He suggested students might take “mask breaks,” removing the coverings during trips outdoors and during class segments when all are watching a presentation and no one is talking.

“If they’re having a group discussion and calling out answers in class, they have to put them on,” he said.

To keep potential exposures to a minimum, Peiffer said, elementary students are to remain with the same limited cohort of peers throughout the school day.

Stephanie Grace questioned “how this is all going to work when I have the potential to be in contact with people in three different buildings. I have two children in Metzgar (Elementary), I teach at the high school and I coach at the middle school.”

Peiffer said the district would take steps needed to best protect all involved.

He said infrared monitors placed at building entrances are meant to detect students with elevated temperatures as they arrive at their school. Staff would further check such students with touchless thermometers. Students are to use hand sanitizer when arriving at school and when entering and exiting classrooms.

If, on three consecutive days, a student with covid-19 symptoms is sent to the school nurse, or if the nurse assesses multiple students with such symptoms in a single day, that school would be closed for 14 days of deep cleaning while all students would be limited to remote learning. The same procedure would apply in the case of symptomatic staff.

When secondary students are learning remotely, their attendance will be tracked as they log in and out of virtual class sessions. In contrast, each elementary student’s attendance will be gauged based on completion of instructional goals.

Lenni Nedley, coordinator of elementary education, said instructional schedules for elementary students will be more flexible, but it requires “communication between the parent and teacher on what that looks like for each household.”

More details of the Greensburg Salem school reopening plan can be seen at the district website.