SANDPOINT — The Lake Pend Oreille School District will be returning to in-person classes starting Jan. 4, the LPOSD school board decided in a meeting Tuesday morning.

At the meeting, Superintendent Tom Albertson presented the board with the option to begin classes on Jan 4-8 with remote learning to allow time for symptoms to appear should students contract COVID-19 over the New Year’s holiday.

In the past two major holidays where there was data available, both Halloween and Thanksgiving were related to a spike in cases within Bonner County, Albertson said.

As of the board’s meeting in November, there were 66 students and staff quarantined, Albertson said. As of Dec. 18, there were 140, although in that case roughly 30-45 students from the girl’s basketball team and the wrestling team were quarantined.

Several school board members said although the additional time away from in-person learning might reduce risks, they did not want to cause more difficulty for families or minimize students’ learning opportunities by making them stay home longer.

In addition, some argued that the exposure over Christmas would likely be higher than New Year’s Day, and that the symptoms from those exposures should be appearing before school begins.

Geraldine Lewis, vice chair of the board, said she had heard from families both for and against delaying in-person classes. From an educational standpoint, she said, she had doubts about the efficacy of online learning right after students return from a holiday.

Although there have been spikes after holidays, Gary Suppiger said, he did not believe there was significant enough to change school plans — especially because safety requirements within the district are stricter than most public spaces.

“I don’t believe it’s significant enough to change our plan,” Suppiger said. “The infection rates are lower in the schools.”

Albertson said he believes students get the best education in person, but he did have some concerns for the adult staff, including bus drivers and teachers who would be interacting with students.

However, given the board’s decision to commence in-person classes on Jan. 4, he said it is important that parents keep children at home if there is a positive or potentially positive test result within the household.

In addition, he said, those who traveled outside of the area or had visitors from outside of the area should use extreme caution.

“In the few [positive] cases that we know [of], we were pending results and kids kept going to school, and the result came back,” he said. “If there’s a positive in the household, it’s more than likely other people in the household will test positive.”

The board also briefly discussed the plans for renting school facilities to outside organizations during the pandemic. As more facilities have closed their doors, Albertson said, there was an increase in requests to use school facilities by groups from outside of the area.

His proposal to the board, Albertson said, was to allow continued use for school functions and local groups but not rent spaces for outside groups.

Allowing too many outside groups to use school facilities could create challenges for the facilities staff, Albertson said, and potentially increase the risk of transmission within schools.

Currently, the district also has not made any changes in pricing for renting school facilities to account for the added cost and time needed to clean after events, he said.

“I’m with [Albertson],” Lewis said. “We keep it open for our youth and our community, but limit it for outside our community.”