Ironwood Schools to stop posting COVID-19 cases

By ZACHARY MARANO

zmarano@yourdailyglobe.com

Ironwood — Ironwood Area Schools Superintendent Travis Powell said that the COVID-19 case count in Gogebic County is very low and the state of Michigan is starting to relax their restrictions at the school’s board of education meeting on Monday.

Last month, the state of Michigan announced that masks are no longer required on school buses and more recently, they said that they do not have to continue publicly displaying COVID-19 cases at the school.

As a result, Powell said that Ironwood Area Schools will no longer report confirmed and probable cases among students and staff on the “COVID-19 Case Reporting and Training” page on their website.

“It looks like we haven’t been updating it anyways, but that’s because there haven’t been many cases either,” he said.

However, Powell said they will still monitor the situation. He said that he has been meeting with the Western Upper Peninsula Health Department every two weeks as a representative of the Gogebic half of the Gogebic-Ontonagon Intermediate School District.

Powell said the WUPHD and GOISD agreed to only meet once a month if things continue the way that they are, but they will keep the meeting structure in place and resume their biweekly meetings if there is a sudden jump in cases or a new variant emerges.

Powell presented a chart showing Ironwood Area Schools’ strategic plan for 2021-2025. He said that the highest priority, as determined by the board of education in a workshop, was to secure a 21st Century Learning Grant to fund their before- and after-school programs.

Before the application is due on April 5, Powell said that he will form community partnerships to put the school in better standing to have the grant approved. He said that he has already contacted the Ironwood Carnegie Library and the Michigan State University Extension Office in Bessemer.

Powell added that although they are prioritizing the 21st Century Learning Grant, a communications tree and a facilities audit, the strategic plan allows for some flexibility and that some items can move up the list if they receive support from the community or a grant program.

“A great example would be our weight room. We have a very excited group of staff who are interested in seeing some updates to our weight room. They made a proposal that shows how improving our weight room would help support all of our athletic programs. They also generated some funds, solicited some donations and got some community support,” Powell said.

Powell said that this allowed the weight room upgrade to move forward without a lot of planning or grant writing. He said that they anticipate that the weight room could be upgraded in the coming months and ready for use in their open gym weight training programs during the summer.

In her update to the board, K-12 Principal Melissa Nigh said that she is working to “revitalize” the school library with paraprofessional Angela Gallo and Ironwood Carnegie Library Director Lynne Wiercinski.

Nigh said there are some books in the library that have not been checked out since 1999. She said they are emailing staff to see what they want ordered for the library and Gallo will spend some of the summer weeding out old books and re-organizing the collection with new ones. Wiercinski helped the Ironwood Area Schools staff find suppliers that sell new books to schools at lower rates.

Nigh said that they are still working on how to motivate older students to use the library more. She said that K-6 students use the school library a lot because they have a 30-minute time slot in there every week, but the 7-12 students don’t use it as much. She said that many of these students seem to either read online or not read at all.

Athletic Director Daniel Martinson said that the biggest issue facing his department is the lack of school bus drivers. Martinson said that the teams will either have to transport themselves to athletic events this spring or cancel them.

The board of education approved a personnel report that listed two FT/FY custodians/bus drivers as well as a special education teacher, an alternative education science and earth science teacher, two GED instructors, a boys and girls soccer coach, one PT/SY food service worker and one PT/SY paraprofessional as open positions.

Special Education Supervisor Heidi Lauzon said that her department is in the process of implementing video modeling, an evidence-based practice that helps students with autism spectrum disorders understand instructions by showing them a video of someone else doing a task and having them imitate that behavior.

Lauzon said that the Special Education Department will record some of their students’ peers doing tasks at the school, with their parents’ permission, and have the other students watch the videos.