COEUR d’ALENE — The Coeur d’Alene School District is back in the “orange” moderate COVID category, with a few changes to the reopening plan.

The board unanimously voted during a special meeting Monday to again change the risk level following Superintendent Steve Cook’s administrative decision Friday that immediately moved high schools from “yellow” to “orange” because of a substantial number of positive COVID cases and affiliated exposures resulting in quarantine.

Out of the 48 positive cases of students or staff that have happened in the school district, they’ve created an environment in which 387 students and staff have been quarantined at some point, Cook said, adding that 24% of students and staff quarantined have been at the elementary school level, 3% in middle schools and 73% have been at the high schools.

"That’s one of the reasons that we felt like it was necessary that we take some differentiated action,” he said.

A second unanimous vote during the session approved plans to do things differently at the elementary and middle schools, where transmission is not as high. Cook recommended to keep K-8 in school four days a week — Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday — with remote learning on Wednesdays. This schedule will remain in effect whether the district is in “orange” or “yellow” to minimize disruption of class time and to provide as much in-person instruction as possible as children at the younger levels have struggled with remote and independent learning more than their older counterparts.

He said what the district is struggling with is the substantial impact of a positive case in a high school.

“When you consider that everywhere that positive case goes, there are potentially people that are going to be within six feet of that person,” he said. "When you administer to that with regards to exposure, you’re going to have cases, you’re going to have exposure that then we have to act upon with regards to next steps.”

He said an eight-period schedule, which Lake City High has, creates even more of a dynamic than the six-period schedule at Coeur d'Alene High "because each one of those classes is a new opportunity for that exposure to occur."

"It’s just one of those things that we’re going to have to be mindful of if we were to go back to full-time student participation at the high school level," he said.

The high schools will remain at the "orange" level with blended learning in place: half of the students go in person Mondays and Tuesdays, the other half go in person Thursdays and Fridays and the rest of the week is online.

The recommendation for the younger grades is to allow for stability and predictability. Cook said the general theme the district is getting from families and staff is that “the transitions are tremendously burdensome." The unpredictability of what students and staff are going through “is creating much of the angst and the energy around the current circumstances."

“We believe this model might benefit — at some cost — a lot of groups,” Cook said.

In this updated plan, the district reserves the option to place a school in the original blended learning schedule, with students attending in person two days a week, if that school is experiencing a high number of COVID-related absences.

The changes will go into effect Monday.