Hall High School will transition to a hybrid-learning plan Feb. 1

SPRING VALLEY – Hall High School students are returning to in-person classes for the first time this school year. Students will transition to a hybrid-learning plan Monday, Superintendent Jesse Brandt said.

Brandt said they have decided to change the metrics they look at when determining what kind of learning will be taking place.

“There are two changes,” Brandt said. “The first one is: We are only going to look at the positivity rate now. We dropped the number of new-cases-per-100,000-people metric that we were using last semester. The second change is that we are not using numbers from all of Bureau County. We will only be using numbers from the three largest communities that feed into Hall High School [Spring Valley, Ladd and Dalzell].”

The district will look at the metrics posted online at covid-dashboard.fsm.northwestern.edu/.

When the positivity rate drops below 3%, students will be able to return to in-person classes full time.

During the third nine weeks, students are taking four classes, and during the fourth nine weeks, students will be taking three classes. The downside is there will be more work to do per class since they have to get a semester’s amount of work done in nine weeks. Brandt also stressed that it will be important for students to get off on the right foot so they don’t get behind since there will not be as much time to get caught up with classes only lasting nine weeks.

In other news:

• Brandt provided the board with a mid-year budget review. Brandt said that everything looked good as of right now and that there had been no unexpected expenses.

• The board approved the 2021-22 school calendar.

• The football field lighting project was discussed. The board was given a quick overview of three options for the new lighting ranging from just installing new LED lights to fully replacing all poles, wiring and lighting. No action was taken at this time.