Superintendent Witty working hard to get students into the classroom more
By Shannon Weidemann (McKone) on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2021 in Eastern/Southeast Oregon News More Top Stories
BAKER CITY – Baker 5J School District Superintendent Mark Witty is working hard to try and get students in the district into more days of in-person learning. Witty sat down with staff with the Elkhorn Media Group to give us an update.
(Q) Superintend Witty, there has been some conversations taking place recently regarding getting Baker Middle School and High School students into the classroom more often than what is happening currently. Can you give us an update on what that conversation has been and what the status is?
(A) Right now, students, in Baker School District, K- 6 have been in person all day since October 14. On November 9th, we had secondary students in one day a week.
and on January 25th we moved to two days.
We can’t do any more at this juncture unless a few of the rules in Ready School, Safe Learners are adjusted.
I do want to point out, and I’m proud of this because our staff has worked very hard to accomplish this, but we haven’t had any spread within the school district of COVID-19. So, I think we have a really good track record.
I was able to meet with about 12 Superintendents on Monday morning in a conversation, and we were asked what are some other things that could be done to get more students in school. That was the avenue we utilized to go ahead and show that this is what would have to happen to get more students in.
So, there are a couple of factors that we pointed out to the Oregon Department of Education (ODE), Oregon Health Authority (OHA), and the Governor’s office, but one main thing is that approximately 75% of my staff of the staff at Baker School District have received their vaccinations. In fact, every staff member that has wanted a vaccination has gotten it. Also starting on this past Monday folks within our community that are 65 years and older qualified for the vaccine. So, we’re quickly closing in on getting all those that want the vaccine that are in that elderly population. And so, we’re making really good headway in that regard.
In the conversation, we pointed out that the only way we could get more students in is, one, look at the square footage requirement. Right now, it’s essentially 35 square feet per student and we would need that to adjust downwards to be able to get more students in, plus we need to be able to move the 100-cohort group upwards to 180 – 190 for the high school to be able to get all those students in at the same time. I will also point out that we have support from Union leadership within the Baker School District to move this direction. And, at some point, we do need to move back in and in my view the vaccinations have been the key component of being able to get us back in and now that we’re getting those vaccines out and more and more people are vaccinated, especially those who are vulnerable populations, we need to strongly consider the academic consequences and the social and emotional toll on our students by them not being in school every day full-time.
It’s our hope that OHA and those that decision level at the state will strongly consider this option, and if they do, we’ve been pushing to get back in full, hopefully April 5th or April 12th, but essentially soon after Spring Break.
Again, this is a discussion at this juncture. I can’t say with certainty that that’s what will happen. But we are making the argument and I think critically the more people that get vaccinations within our community the better argument we have to make to get her kids back into school in a way we know we can serve them best.
(Q) Do you have any idea of when you may hear back from them about a decision?
(A) I don’t at this time. The reality is that I started the conversation last Friday and had multiple conversations over the weekend with local leadership and state leadership and then made the presentation on Monday. So, you know, I think it’s too early, but towards the end of this week first and next week, I’ll be re-engaging and seeing if, in fact, there can be some traction down this pathway. I truly hope so. It really is dependent upon some of those key leaders in the state level at this juncture.In my conversations, the Governor is clear that she is wanting to get as many students back in as possible. And so that gives me hope that some of the arguments that we are making might be impactful and get us to where we want to be.
