Washington Elementary students remain masked

By CHARITY SMITH

csmith@yourdailyglobe.com

Bessemer - Students at Washington Elementary school will remain masked, according to the decision of the Bessemer Area School Board on Tuesday.

The members decided to keep its elementary school mandate in place until further notice. The school board will re-evaluate the elementary mask mandate at each monthly board meeting.

"I think we got a good plan right now," said Superintendent Dan Niemi. "People are really compliant and we are being really vigilant on what we are doing."

The district is just being "cautious," Niemi said. The decision followed conversations with other area superintendents and the Western Upper Peninsula Health Department, he said.

"We're policing ourselves and I think we're above and beyond in the game," said Niemi.

At this point letters regarding any COVID-19 exposures are not being sent to parents, he said. The school district is instead opting to make direct phone contact, when a student is exposed to the virus in order to ensure that parents get the message. That way parents don't accidentally send an exposed student to school to attend classes.

"This is where it gets a bit dicey," said elementary principal Mark Switzer. "Other schools have kind of decided where if there's a case in the class - we're just going to say there's a case in the class, and monitor your child's symptoms."

Board member Beth Steiger said that it was a real fine line, because the virus is not a "really a visible thing."

Students will now be able to receive after school tutoring twice a week, thanks to a $1,000 grant from Walmart Inc. Tutoring will be available on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for students in grades 7-12.

The school district does have plans to set up additional tutoring programs for the elementary students, Neimi said. The plans include general tutoring for grades 4-6 and reading tutoring for those in grades K-3.

The district is up one student this year with a total count of 380 students, Niemi said. This is "pretty good," compared to the district's preliminary numbers which had the district down 16 students, he said.

"We did really well," said Niemi. "We collected and we ended up enrolling a lot of the homeschool kids who came back. School of choice, that was huge, and then we had some kids that moved in from the neighboring districts and some from out of town. So we are sitting very steady right now."

The board voted to re-open the third grade to school of choice. The decision is a result of an additional third grade class opening up, after a third grade student moved into the district.

A standard class size is 15 to 25 students. The additional third grade student brought the third grade total to 29 and made it necessary for an additional class.

The board approved the hire of Stephanie Lewis as a long term teacher for the additional third grade class.

The board also:

-Approved of the internal lunch count procedure being conducted in an electronic format.

-Heard that the total number of students quarantined at ADJ/WES since the beginning of the school year remains the same.

-Retroactively hired Tracy Rowe as varsity volleyball coach, effective Aug. 30.

-Retroactively hired David Rowe as junior varsity volleyball coach, effective Aug. 30.

-Hired Micaela Zelinski and Rachel Hendges as junior class advisors.

Hired Micaela Zelinski as junior varsity girls basketball coach for the 2021-2022 season, and as high school senate advisor.

-Accepted the resignation of Shelly Mettler as varsity volleyball coach.

-Heard from student Ava Ledin, who requested the district open a Bessemer only golf team. Ledin said there is enough student interest for the district to have its own team. The board said they will give the idea further consideration.