Additional Arlington students return to classrooms in January

Arlington School District's second and third graders are scheduled to return to campus on Jan. 19, dependent on any future changes of guidelines from state health agencies.

On Dec. 16 Gov. Jay Inslee released his most recent school guideline recommendations.

He recommended that counties that have a high number of COVID cases, such as Snohomish County, offer in-person instruction for only elementary and high-need students in groups of 15 or fewer.

Snohomish Health District Health Officer Chris Spitters said the health district continues to support in-person instruction for kindergarten through third grade as long as safety measures are taken by the school district.

"There is very limited, if any, outbreaks occurring in the learning situation," he said during a Dec. 15 briefing.

"Hopefully as things progress we can layer in some of the older kids, circumstances permitting," said Spitters.

The Arlington School District has seen positive cases but has not dealt with an outbreak situation.

District nurse Krissa Cramer gives updates to the board of directors every two weeks and said there have been 27 positive cases of COVID-19 since March that have stepped onto an Arlington campus.

"I can't go into too much detail because we're trying really hard to protect the health information," of the staff and students, she said.

"When we do have a positive case, we are not seeing that spread around the school," which is their biggest concern, so it was good that there hasn't been an uncontrolled spread, said Cramer.

"The safety measures have been working really well," she said.

Those measures include masks, physical distancing, plastic barriers and keeping students in small groups that don’t interact with other groups.

Returning second and third grade students will also be in the 'hybrid' model, so they spend two days a week on campus for in-person learning and the rest of the week learning online.

Students will also be spending the first two weeks of the year with online learning to prevent any spread due to the holiday season.

When they return, the district plans to provide rapid testing for staff that wish to volunteer.

"So, before our staff have any interaction with the students they will already be tested," said Gary Sabol, director of communications with the school district.

Cramer doesn't foresee any challenges from scaling up to accommodate the potential of incoming second and third graders.

"We have been seeing students for a few weeks now and I feel we are prepared for more students," said Cramer.

The pandemic is a new situation for many in the district and exactly how fast to return is a frequent point of discussion.

"At the board meetings there is a lot of discussion on when exactly is the best time to bring students back," said Sabol.

Although the decision on when to return is ultimately up to the school board of directors they are following guidelines from the Snohomish Health District and state health agencies.

"The guidance from the health district allows us to bring first through third grade as long as it is in a hybrid situation," said Sabol.

Since returning to school for kindergarten and first grade, many teachers have been glad to return, said Sabol.

"We've visited some different classrooms and all of the teachers are so excited to have students back," he said.

For students, face-to-face is still "the most effective" way to learn, said Sabol, although he also said the district took steps to improve their online learning from the spring.

When the pandemic first hit, the school district was "thrown into the deep end," and had to quickly adapt to an online learning place.

"Over the summer we had much more time to prepare and that has made a big difference," he said.