Follow COVID guidelines, school leaders urge
(12/30/2020)
Area school leaders are urging community members to follow COVID-19 guidelines over the holidays to help ensure enough staff members are healthy and able to work in-person as the new year begins.
With the most recent state guidance allowing elementary schools to return to hybrid or in-person learning on January 18 as long as they can put certain COVID precautions in place — regardless of the county case rate — districts still need a sufficient number of staff members to be out of quarantine or isolation to keep schools operating in person.
Districts also still have to consider the county case rate when deciding which learning model to have in place at the middle and high school levels, meaning a county case rate must be below 30 to implement hybrid learning for middle and high school students. As the most up-to-date unofficial 14-day case rate stands at 38, Winona County has not yet reached that threshold.