The Manitowoc Public School District Board of Education voted six to nothing Tuesday afternoon to begin the 2020-21 school year September first with a “blended model” of instruction. Superintendent Marc Holzman says this allows for a balanced mix of face to face and on-line learning.
“The Elementary model will have four half days so; students will have the opportunity to go to school in the morning or in the afternoon then have online learning and face-to-face. In the Middle School, they will choose one of three days and then have the other days be online learning. The High School will have 2-half days and then the other part will be online learning.”
Holzman tells Seehafer News that they took into consideration multiple sources of health data-including State-defined “activity levels” of COVID 19 presence within a community.
“Manitowoc has moved to a high level, our burden, which is another number of cases per 100,000 moved from moderately high to high. So, that is is a piece of information we utilized. also, we took lots of feedback from parents and staff members in regard to how we return in a safe manner.”
Holzman and Board members reiterated and acknowledge that, “The best model for learning is face to face and this blended model gives us some of that knowing all along that, we have some work to do as a school and as a community to get back in a healthy matter So that we can bring our 5000 students and 800 employees back to work every day and face to face every day”
The MPSD Superintendent adds “I’m absolutely confident that all health and safety protocols are in Place and receiving continual feedback from staff on how to best put this plan forth. We have a direction To go and we’re going full speed ahead knowing we have a lot of work to do.” Information is planned to Be emailed to parents this week.”
