Educators in Jefferson County’s two school districts are hard at work creating safe plans for the return of in-person learning, now that Gov. Kate Brown’s new school reopening rules and a sharp decline in local COVID-19 cases allow the county to bring back students.

Culver School District already has a planned reopening date of Nov. 30, the Monday after Thanksgiving. The much-larger Jefferson County School District has not determined exactly when students would return to classrooms. Students in both districts who wish to stay home will be allowed to continue online learning.

“Everyone in the district is elated,” said Stefanie Garber, superintendent of Culver School District, which served 683 students last year.

Leaders in Jefferson County School District, which served nearly 2,900 students last school year, are working out what in-person school will look like, and how many students will participate, after nearly eight months of distance learning.

Still, school leaders are eager to get students back in classrooms, said Superintendent Ken Parshall.

“I think everybody in every role, whether they’re at home as a family member, or a staff member, feels the urgency,” he said. “The more we’re in this (online) model, the more we realize the loss.”

In the new state reopening metrics unveiled last week, Jefferson County falls within the “green zone,” landing far below both benchmarks of 30 total cases and a 5% test positivity rate in the past two weeks.

That means school districts in the county can bring back all students in every grade — a stunning reversal compared to this summer, when Jefferson County had some of the highest case rates in the state and a county health official predicted students wouldn’t return to classrooms until 2021.

Jefferson County School District staff are still creating plans to ensure the safety of students and staff, as well as determining how many students will choose to continue online learning, Parshall said, its superintendent.

“It’s so hard to determine right now, with all these moving parts,” he said.

Jefferson County staffers are currently talking with families in the Madras, Warm Springs and Metolius areas, seeing how many students will return to schools and how many will opt to stay home and learn online, Parshall said.

Those numbers will determine how many staffers will be needed inside schools and how many should specifically work with online-focused students, he said.

The district is also forming plans for the peripheral aspects of school, such as transportation and making sure there are enough substitute teachers ready, said Kira Fee, director of student services.

In Culver — where about 75% of students currently return to classrooms every day in limited in-person instruction — the district is also making plans for aspects like transportation and meals, said Garber. District officials are also still deciding whether high school students will return in a part-time, hybrid schedule, while middle and elementary students will attend five days a week, she said.

On Friday, Culver staff will send out a survey to all families that asks them to choose between staying online or attending school in-person, Garber said.

Because many Culver students have already attended in-person class, the district has a head start on a full re-open — hence why the district gave families a solid reopening date of Nov. 30. But the district still wants to get the details right, Garber said.

“A majority of the middle and elementary students are aware of protocols,” she said. “We just have to make sure that everything is safe.”

There is a bit of a deadline for Jefferson County: under state rules, a county that meets reopening metrics has two weeks to bring back students under that week of successful results, even if later weeks show spiking numbers.

Garber was hopeful that local COVID-19 case counts would stay low throughout November, as her Nov. 30 opening date is past that two-week deadline.

She also noted that if cases begin to rise later, the new metrics still allow more local control over reopening.

Parshall said Jefferson County School District won’t speed through its plans just to meet that deadline.

“We feel some sense of urgency,” he said. “With that said, we’re not going to rush at the expense of not doing things well.”