FAIRMONT — The Granada-Huntley-East Chain School Board on Thursday heard from Assistant Principal Taylor Topinka, who gave a review concerning the school’s recent e-learning day.

E-learning is a way for teachers to take what has been taught in the classroom and convey related material to their students digitally at home.

“We’ve had a pretty uninterrupted winter, and I feel like one thing that has allowed us to maintain that is our e-learning,” Topinka said. “We had our first one on Feb. 13, and I think it was a pretty successful day. The students I talked to thought it wasn’t that bad.”

In related news, e-learning may or may not play an expanded role in the district’s near future, as the school looks at the ongoing impact of the coronavirus. Superintendent and Principal Doug Storbeck discussed how an uncertain near future will affect the school as a whole.

“At this time, [the state is] not recommending the closure of schools,” he said. “The impact on students, which is our main concern at this point, and the impact on their age level is very minimal. I did share with staff and the school board a couple of resources indicating that they’re not recommending closing schools at this point.

“What we need to do at this point is come up with a game plan if they do move forward with school closure,” Storbeck said. “I had heard the thought of approving e-learning days for up to 10 or 20 days. In my mind, that is not the purpose of e-learning days. We don’t use it to introduce new curriculum; we use it as a review process but not to use it as a replacement for instruction given in the classroom. So that’s a concern for me. If we’re going to do this for an extended amount of time, we might have to change our philosophy on that.”

Storbeck raised another area of concern: the potential impact of the pandemic on a class trip scheduled for April 13, with juniors and seniors scheduled to go to New York and Washington, D.C.

“At this point, we have not made any decisions on that,” he said.

Board member Amy Maday said she had e-mailed the tour company last week, before the pandemic was declared.

“She suggested that we’re on a coach bus, so we’re contained and that’s good,” Maday said. “She suggested to wipe it down with Lysol wipes after every trip, use hand sanitizer and get rest and drink water. I reached out to her again to see what will happen if things were closed down to see if we could get our money back, but she hasn’t got back to me yet.”

“Ultimately, the answer might be given to us,” Storbeck said. “Those things might be decided for us.”

Board member Chris Pytleski offered his thoughts on the issue.

“I’d just like to say, I know what has been sent out from the (state) Department of Health, and we all saw how fast all the sports things were affected in the last 24 hours,” he said. “Don’t fall asleep on this one. I hope I’m wrong, but I have a feeling we might get mandated (to close schools for a period of time) at some point in time, and I don’t think they’re going to forgive [the days off].”

Storbeck noted that staff will discuss the matter at future meetings.

“I think our teachers have put in a lot of work on how to do the e-learning days,” Storbeck said. “Now, if we do it for an extended amount of time the question will be how we can give new instruction using e-learning. We have the tools, and I think that we are prepared for any scenario that is thrown out there.”

In other action, the board:

o Approved dropping the technology credit requirement because of the implementation of technology throughout various classrooms. The credit is not required by the state.

o Approved dropping a career class credit requirement.

o Approved a contract to hire Star Schipper as the ag/business education teacher for the 2020-2021 school year.