Post Falls continues in 'orange'

POST FALLS — Members of the Post Falls School Board on Monday decided to hold off on making any changes to their district’s COVID risk level at this time.

Post Falls will continue to operate in “orange,” which splits the student population into Cohorts A and B, with Cohort A — students with last names that begin with A through K — attending school in person on Mondays and Thursdays, and the second half of the alphabet comprising Cohort B, which attends in person on Tuesdays and Fridays. Online learning takes place the rest of the week.

“The numbers are going up, and this is not a good sign,” Trustee Michelle Lippert said during the special meeting, which was held at River City Middle School.

The Post Falls School District has experienced four positive COVID cases since opening, at New Vision High, Post Falls Middle, Treaty Rock Elementary and Ponderosa Elementary.

“We talked about the fact that, if we compare ourselves to Lakeland (School District), they opened in yellow and they’ve had 10 cases, we’ve had three,” Lippert said.

“There was another one today,” Superintendent Dena Naccarato interjected.

“OK, we’ve got four,” Lippert said. “I might be speaking partially as somebody who was a teacher for my entire career, and somebody who’s been a parent for 29 years, I honestly think that the best thing to do at this point is to stay in ‘orange’ for at least another two weeks.

“I just don’t want to be jerking teachers around, saying, ‘Hey, we’re in ‘orange,’ but now we need to go to ‘yellow,’ now we’re going back to ‘orange,’ and I don’t want to do the same thing to parents,” she continued. “Unless the whole system is falling apart because we’re in ‘orange,’ I think we should stay the course for a couple more weeks.”

Her colleagues were in agreement to refrain from making a motion to change the risk color until at least the next regularly scheduled school board meeting at 6 p.m. Oct. 12.

Naccarato said although it isn’t perfect, at least students and teachers are in classrooms together two days a week. She said two more weeks to the next board meeting is not long to wait.

“We should not make time our enemy,” she said.

River City Middle School is at 1505 N. Fir St., Post Falls.