“We have a lot of ….

“We have a lot of things going on in May as we’re trying to get things a little more back to normal,” Lindner said. “We felt confident. We’ll see where this goes.”

The last time Loyal had any students or staff members absent from school due to a COVID-19 case or close contact with someone who had it was about three weeks ago. There were off-and-on instances throughout the year when positive COVID-19 tests forced students and staff to quarantine for two weeks, and several times as one group returned, another would leave. The district never reached the point where it had to go to entirely virtual learning because too many students or staff were held out. The district did hold multiple virtual school days throughout the year, but those were designed to give staff members some extra time to complete double lesson plans and give attention to those students who did all virtual learning throughout the year. Lindner said 18-19 students chose to be all virtual early in the year, but that number has fallen to seven or eight now.

Lindner said the the face mask rule helped Loyal go to a full-time in-person class schedule while many other schools in the area used a hybrid model that had students attending only a few days a week.

“Other than that (the one day in September when classes were cancelled due to the contact tracing situation), we’ve been here,” Lindner said. “It’s been a very good thing for our teachers and our kids.”