Royal schools bring some classes back to campus full time
ROYAL CITY — Royal School District kindergartners, first-graders and fourth-graders returned to on-campus instruction full time Monday.
District superintendent Roger Trail said children in those three classes will be at school five days per week, with Friday continuing to be a half-day for all students. All other classes will continue in the hybrid schedule which Royal students have been using for the school year to date. In the hybrid schedule students are on campus two days per week, with all-online instruction two days per week.
Parents also have the option of all-online instruction.
Royal schools were using part-time instruction due to the COVID-19 outbreak that closed schools for the last 10 weeks of the 2019-20 school year. Royal was one of two Grant County districts to start school with an option that allowed for on-campus instruction. Most county schools opted for all-online instruction to start the school year, although most have announced plans to resume some on-campus instruction by November.
Trail said district officials designated the fourth grade as one of the first three classes because district officials wanted a class from the Royal Intermediate School to be part of the first phase.
Grant County Health District officials recommended a phased reopening, with at least three weeks between phases. At the end of three weeks district officials will assess the results, Trail said, and if there are no outbreaks, will start working to bring other classes back for full-time instruction.
There’s enough room to meet social distancing guidelines at Royal Elementary and the intermediate school. But Trail said it’s a different situation at Royal Middle School and Royal High School.
The number of students at the middle school and high school and the size of the buildings make it impossible to meet the social distancing guidelines at RHS or RMS.
The coronavirus case rate in Royal City, at least currently, is low enough the district might be able to reopen without the social distancing requirements, Trail said. But the case rate in Grant County is higher than the benchmarks, and the county benchmark may be the standard that’s required, he said.
If the countywide case rate is the benchmark the district must meet before reopening, the high school and middle school would have to stay in the hybrid schedule for now, he said.
So far, Trail said, the district hasn’t experienced any outbreaks. He attributed that to kids and teachers practicing the social distancing guidelines, the daily screenings, and parents keeping their children home when the kids are sick.