NEENAH (NBC 26) — It's the day educators prepare for all summer - the first day of school.
Wednesday was Neenah schools' first day completely back in-person since the start of the pandemic.
"For teachers, there's this energy in the air. For them this is game day," said Jackie Muñoz-Ellmann, the principal at Horace Mann Middle School. "They have been preparing all summer, their classrooms are ready and they are just ready to go."
Jim Strick, the communications manager for Neenah Joint School District, says schools are once again back at full capacity after many students were attending virtually last year.
"Last year was kind of building school from scratch, we kind of threw out everything we had done for the previous hundred years and kind of put together a whole new plan," Strick said.
Earlier this month, the school district decided to require masks for students, staff members and visitors at the start of the year due to rising COVID cases in the area.
Aside from the current mask requirement, Strick says the schools are returning to normalcy. Schools are once again using facilities like the cafeteria and gymnasium, after previously having lunch and P.E in classrooms last year to avoid mingling among the students. He says schools are also returning to a normal class schedule.
"At the high school last year, for most of the year we only did two classes a day so we had kids take a three hour morning class and a three hour afternoon class and it was a really tough day," Strick said. "This year we're kind of back to a normal schedule."
Muñoz-Ellmann says her school will monitor the number of COVID cases in the school district and continue to evaluate its COVID protocols throughout the year according to guidance from the local health department.
"We're obviously encouraging frequent hand-washing, sanitizing, we're making sure we have seating charts available. There are protocols in place for families that may have positive cases or are symptomatic. We are very fortunate because we are also going to have on-site testing this year," Muñoz-Ellmann said.
She says keeping the students in-person is their top priority.
"Having the students back in-person feels great. That's our ultimate goal. We feel we can provide the best education to our students when they are right here in front of us," she said. "We just ask for our families, our students, our staff to just give us grace and be flexible because we want to be here with our kids in person."
