By Megan Kelley

Review Writer

At their March 10 meeting, the Lake Orion Community Schools Board of Education approved a new COVID-19 Learning Plan that would eliminate the current hybrid schedule at Lake Orion High School.

Beginning on March 22, all high school in-person students will have in-person instruction five days a week. While the school schedule is expected to stay relatively similar to the regular late start Wednesday schedule, the time is subject to some fluctuation in the future because of dismissal times at the high school, Scripps Middle School and Stadium Drive Elementary.

High school administrators are also planning to add time during a block class to allow for a “nutrition break” during the school day. This would allow to students to have a snack while maintaining social distancing and without academic interruption.

The rest of the district’s grade levels are expected to maintain their current schedule through the rest of the school year.

“We feel like where we’re at at the elementary and middle, there’s no more to progress to right now. Really the progression, really can only happen at the high school level because we’re not at the same schedule, academic programing, time and so on,” said district Superintendent Ben Kirby.

According to Kirby, this transition is due in large part to continued progress in terms of fewer positive cases of coronavirus in the community, as well as testing capabilities and now vaccine distribution.

“We feel like within a few weeks we’ll be at approximately 80 percent of our staff will be vaccinated, based on the survey data that we received” Kirby said. “We had 60 percent at the time a little over a week ago. I think we got the end results that 60 percent were fully vaccinated – meaning got both shots. And then we had 19 percent that were waiting for their second shot. Then we had a group that was still anticipating their first shot and a group that was choosing not to be vaccinated. So, I wanted to share that with you that we feel like we’re in a good position with our staff with that as well.”

As Kirby has stated in previous meetings, COVID-19 transmissions are far less likely in a school setting.

“What OCHD (Oakland County Health Division) tells us is that the biggest challenge that our students face is the extracurricular activities. That’s where the transmissions are occurring,” Kirby said. “It doesn’t matter if we have one student in our school at a time or if we have all of them, they’re still going to participate in those extracurricular activities.”

With the changes in health orders, the district hopes that COVID-19 numbers throughout the community will continue to improve and allow for the shift back to a more traditional school day to continue.

“The new health order increasing capacities, bottom line there is that’s based on the COVID numbers in our state and that there’s continuing improvement in the pandemic response and our communities are responsible for that,” Kirby said. “Hopefully, we’re, as Jim (Weidman, school board president) said, on our way out of this pandemic.”