During a special meeting Tuesday night, the USD 259 Board of Education revealed their plans for the rest of this semester.

The board approved a hybrid learning plan for the second quarter of school. It was decided that there would be two groups of students, group A and group B. Group A will be going to school on Monday and Tuesday, and Group B will be going to school on Thursday and Friday. Wednesday will be remote learning day for everyone.

“We are stuck in the yellow/orange (according to the pandemic gating criteria), and we are going to be stuck in yellow/orange for a long time… we cannot continue down this path of only remote 100% for any more time in my opinion,” Stan Reeser said. Reeser is the board member who made the motion to pass the hybrid model.

Although there is now a plan on what the schedule will look like over all for the rest of this semester, there are still a lot of things that need to be decided. Some questions that still need to be answered are how Wednesdays will look with everyone gone, and if there are any precautionary measures that the board will put in place for schools to prevent an outbreak.

Superintendent Dr. Alicia Thomson justified the board’s decision by saying, “None of the options are perfect, and you know at the end of the day, we really want our kids face to face, and we don’t want COVID-19, but we have it so we really want to try and get the kids back into schools.”

We’ll have the reactions of parents, students and teachers to this decision in the next issue of The Stampede.