The Mineral Point School Board held a special meeting Thursday evening to review COVID protocols to begin the 2021-22 school year.
Video link: https://youtu.be/oc1Dx_Q9Uhs
At last night’s special School Board meeting, the Board voted 4-3 (with Busch, Dunn, Heisner, and Sullivan voting yes and Janetka, Skelding, and Steffes voting no) to approve COVID protocols and a masking matrix, which can be found on our COVID webpage: https://mineralpointschools.org/coronavirus-covid-19-information/. These protocols outline many important items including how the District will handle quarantines to start the 2021-22 school year, as well as the case level increases that would shift from optional masking to required masking. The Board voted to revisit the document six weeks after the vaccine becomes available to children under age 12.
Other business:
— The Board voted 6-1 (with Steffes voting no) to allow Superintendent Wainwright to continue investigating an all-virtual option for families that do not feel comfortable with in-person learning given our current COVID protocols. The virtual curriculum and instruction would be outsourced to an educational company, but students would remain Pointers and would be allowed to participate in school-sponsored activities, clubs, and athletics. A few of the companies Wainwright has reached out to, unfortunately, do not have seats left available for the upcoming school year, but he is still exploring options. The Board voted the cost per pupil not to exceed the open enrollment dollar amount. Prior to this vote, the Board voted 6-1 (with Steffes voting no) to repeal its April motion which stated the District would not offer an all-virtual option in the 2021-22 school year (unless under rare circumstances). (Go to the two hour, nine minute, 15 second mark of the video)
— The next regular meeting of the Board will take place Monday, September 13 at 6:30 pm.