Columbia Board of Education votes to not send middle and high school students back to in-person learning

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

When the Columbia Board of Education voted Monday to send pre-K through 5th grade back to classrooms four days a week, it decided not to include middle and high school students.

School board President Helen Wade said during the board's four-hour meeting that the youngest kids are the ones that need to be in-person first.

The board on Monday approved the return to class for the youngest students in a 4-3 vote. Students in grades pre-K through fifth will return for four days a week starting next Monday. Wednesdays will be reserved for cleaning.

The vote came after hours of discussion and passionate pleas from parents.

"Our youngest kids make the most sense to prioritize getting back in-seat because they are the ones that are having the most difficulty or likely to have the most difficulty," Wade said.

Several other board members, including Teresa Maledy and Blake Willoughby, agreed that getting young children back into the classroom is the priority right now.

"I think we will learn from the elementary and hopefully be able to translate that into middle school," Maledy said.

Wade said one of the main issues with middle and high school students returning in person would be the high levels of contact tracing required because they change classrooms.

"To think about the contact tracing that we will be required to do at the middle and high school levels I think can lead to significant instability because you are talking about potentially a 100 students type of contact," she said.

At the pervious meeting, the board discussed having middle schoolers return to in-person learning in November and high schoolers return to the classroom early next year.

However, at the meeting Monday night the board said middle schoolers and high schoolers will continue to learn online until further notice.

The district had originally proposed sending children back to classrooms via a hybrid system. Under the plan, students would have gone to class two days a week in separate groups, with Wednesdays reserved for a teacher work day.

However, Stiepleman told the board last week that such a system would stretch teachers too thin and many parents were opposed because they would lose access to child care.