MOSES LAKE — The Moses Lake School District is looking at sending all middle and high school students home until early January, but details have to be worked out to present a concrete proposal to temporarily pause the school year to the board at its next meeting on Thursday.

In a 70-minute-long online emergency meeting of the Moses Lake School Board late Monday, Superintendent Josh Meek proposed the idea of a “pause” as an alternative to remote education for the district’s middle schoolers and high schoolers in response to rising COVID-19 cases, noting that remote instruction was not popular and was also failing a number of students.

“Our fundamental purpose is to help our kids learn and grow,” Meek said. “There is grave data from the high school about high failure rate and lots of student not participating in learning.”

Board Member Elliott Goodrich suggested that the district take five weeks off beginning with the second week of December, with students coming back the first or second week of January when, hopefully, the COVID-19 situation in Grant County will have improved and the U.S. is closer to having vaccines available.

The lost time would be made up by adding to the school calendar in June, Goodrich suggested.

As of Monday, according to the MLSD’s COVID-19 dashboard on the district’s website, 25 students (11 middle schoolers, eight middle schoolers and six elementary school students) and 11 teachers and staff (one at Moses Lake High School, two at Endeavor, six at various elementary schools, and two in “other departments,” such as the district office) have been diagnosed with COVID-19 during the last 14 days.

Back in July, the school board approved three options for all students and their families to pursue their educations in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic — full-time in-class, mixed part-time in-class and online with all instruction led by teachers, and full remote using the district’s customized Apex curriculum.

However, prior to the start of school, the board voted to limit all high school students to the hybrid two-days in class and three days remote.

The district also apparently had issues with teachers testing positive or needing to be quarantined, so kids have sat in the gym because there haven’t been enough teachers to hold class, according to board member Elliott Goodrich.

“Remote is terrible,” said board member Bryce McPartland. “It’s a legitimately terrible model.”

“Remote isn’t working, in-class isn’t working,” Goodrich added. “For a lot of kids, this has been a lost year so far.”

Meek said in one recent instance at a school he did not name, a teacher testing positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus resulted in the quarantining of seven other staff members, eventually halting classes for 136 students.

“When you look at these 36 cases, it has a wide impact when you multiply that out,” the superintendent said.

Meek said a number of details would have to be worked out to present a concrete proposal to temporarily pause the school year to the board at its next meeting on Thursday, such as securing an agreement with the unions that represent the district’s teachers and classified staff to adjust the school calendar.

However, board President Vickey Melcher, while supporting the idea of a pause, said there was no guarantee things would be any better in January.

The pause would apply only to middle school and high school students. Elementary school students would continue to attend classes, unless sent home as a result of temporary closures needed to quarantine staff.

Meek said elementary schools were less affected by the pandemic because kids didn’t move around from classroom to classroom and thus “do true cohorting in a much more robust setting.”