RIVER FALLS – July 19 River Falls School Board meeting started with comments from community members and many parents spoke about future COVID precautions for the upcoming school year. There was no approval or decision made during the meeting regarding COVID-19 mitigations.

The school board agreed there was not enough information to make a finalized decision about whether COVID-19 testing would be provided through the school district. The idea for this was to provide an equitable way for testing to be available to all students in the district. The testing would be voluntary and with parent permission only.

Rep. Shannon Zimmerman (R-River Falls) provided a presentation about the K-12 state budget for the upcoming year. This is regarding ESSER funds and the budget cuts from the original proposed budget from Gov. Tony Evers.

Zimmerman answered questions and responded to concerns from members of the school board about these budget cuts. The Joint Finance Committee at the state level is concerned with the spending level and that is the main focus.

Zimmerman said, “We do not want schools to have so much money that it becomes unsustainable to continue to fund the programs they may put in place.”

The Joint Finance Committee is making these decisions to ensure that the schools do not use the federal funding in a way that they cannot continue with after the ESSER funds are no longer available. Because this funding would be a single time payment, the money must be used to recover from COVID-19 and not for implementing permanent programs.

The River Falls School District is planning to use this federal funding for a recovery plan that was approved in previous task force meetings. This plan focuses on learning loss recovery and focusing on helping students with the social, academic, and emotional challenges that were faced during the past year.

Administrative and Superintendent reports included future plans for COVID-19 precautions in the upcoming school year. Currently the summer school program is continuing to make masks optional. There are no specific plans for any other precautions, but this will be revisited at the next meeting on Aug. 16.

The meeting concluded with the approval of student handbooks for schools in the district and minutes from past meetings. Scheduling of future meetings also took place at this time before adjourning.

The next regular school board meeting will take place at 6 p.m. Monday, Aug. 16.