River Ridge might end school year on May 8
By Ted Pennekamp
The school year might end on May 8 for the River Ridge School District.
The River Ridge School Board voted 4-1 at its regular meeting Wednesday evening in favor of applying to have the state requirements for instructional minutes waived if the state rules that there will be no face-to-face instruction for the remainder of the school year.
The state requires at least 437 hours of direct pupil instruction in kindergarten, 1,050 hours of direct pupil instruction in grades 1 to 6 and 1,137 hours of direct pupil instruction in grades 7 to 12.
Board member Kirk Hamann voted against applying for the waiver if such a circumstance were to occur.
“The honeymoon is over for virtual learning,” said District Administrator Clay Koenig. “It worked for two weeks, but now many teachers, students and parents are expressing their frustrations.” The grades of many normally good students have been dropping, said Koenig, who noted that several students in all grade levels just don’t learn as well as they do with face-to-face in school instruction.
Koenig said there is a large inequity in learning due to several factors, an example of which would be a bad family situation that makes virtual learning nearly impossible. For instance, the parents of a family might be yelling at each other all day and night which would make it very hard for a child to concentrate on the computer screen. Other families have a single parent or both parents who are working 8 to 12 hours a day, and the oldest child has to spend the whole day watching over his or her younger siblings.
Online learning began in most school districts throughout Wisconsin shortly after the schools were ordered to be closed by March 18.
The 2019-2020 school year is scheduled to end on May 29. Should school end on May 8, Koenig said the board might also have to consider the possibility of starting school about two and a half weeks earlier for 2020-2021.
In other business, the board:
•approved of refinancing the $1.7 million Wisconsin Trust Fund Loan the district took out in order to help pay for the athletic fields project. The loan is for 4.25 percent interest and needs to be paid back within 19 years. It can be paid back sooner without penalty.
•approved of having a November referendum to pay for the nearly completed athletic fields project. The referendum question would be similar to the question in the Feb. 18 referendum which asked for a loan of up to $2.3 million and to refinance the $1.7 million state trust fund loan which provided interim financing for he project. The Feb. 18 referendum failed by a vote of 331-330.
•approved of a pay increase for teachers of 1 percent, and an increase for support staff of 15 cents per hour.
•approved of conducting virtual school board meetings for the foreseeable future due to the coronavirus threat. Anyone interested in giving input during a virtual school board meeting would need to contact Clay Koenig ahead of time in order to participate in the meeting.
•approved of paying all spring sports coaches 100 percent of their wages.
