By Rich Larson, News Director
The Northfield School District will begin to return to in-person learning next week by bringing Pre-K through
2nd Grade students back on Tuesday. Using the state mandated “Rolling Start” system, those students will be back in school for two weeks before 3rd through 5th graders return to campus on February 1st. If all goes according to plan, the middle school and high school students will return to their hybrid learning model, with students rotating between distance and in-person learning, by February 2nd.
Northfield Schools Superintendent Dr. Matt Hillmann said that the elementary school students can be in school every day for several reasons, one of which is a recent adjustment by the state in one of the key standards for evaluating student safety.
“They have separated elementary learning model decision making from the county infection rate. Since late July the guidance we have had is to try to align the county infection rate with, of course, some other data, with the learning model that we have used. So, the elementary schools are no longer beholden to that county infection rate, and there are a number of reasons for that.”
Research shows that the Covid-19 virus is not easily transmittable between young children and there is little evidence of the virus being transmitted within elementary schools.
Another of the reasons the district is able to return to in-person learning is the health of the staff needed to operate the schools. When the district returned to distance learning in November, school staff was depleted due to Covid-19, but there are now enough healthy staff members to safely run the buildings. Moreover, Hillmann said, the vaccination programs are now reaching key members of the district staff.
“We’re also very excited because we know vaccinations are on the horizon. We actually even heard yesterday that we believe the staff in our school district who qualify for that 1-A priority, those would be health professionals within our schools, like our school nurses and people who work very closely with students who have some kind of disability, will start getting vaccinated as early as next week. So, we have these things that are helping say ‘All right, it looks like we are going to be able to not only come back in the secondary in a hybrid model, but hopefully we’ll be able to sustain it.’”
There are no guarantees against another virus spike, which would force the district back into distance learning, but Hillmann said that overall, he has a “high confidence level” in the return-to-campus plan.
Dr. Hillmann’s full conversation with Jeff johnson can be heard here
Rice County saw high driving fatalities in 2020
While the State of Minnesota reported that DWI citations were down during the Enhanced Enforcement period over the holiday season, Rice County saw one of its worst years for traffic fatalities in quite some time. Ten people died while driving in Rice County in 2020, and Sheriff Troy Dunn said they were all preventable.
“A majority of these crashes – the fatalities, the serious injuries, the crashes themselves – are preventable. If people are driving attentively, driving within the proper speed limit, driving for the conditions, wearing their seatbelts, not driving impaired, then these things are preventable. Seat belts were a big factor this year in our fatalities this year. Many of them were not wearing seatbelts. Distracted driving was another significant cause, as was speed.”
Sheriff Dunn said that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, traffic volumes were down overall, but the high-speed violations were way up. He said that people need to know if they are speeding and something happens, they are liable.
“just so people know, you are at fault, even if you were doing everything else right, if you are found to be speeding you are at fault. That’s going to affect your insurance and it’s going to affect your driving record if we can prove you were speeding. We don’t want to have to write tickets, but we just need people to drive safely for yourself and your loved ones. You can’t just push a reset button and say ‘Hey, I’m going to get my life back.’”
Dunn said that the hardest part of his job is telling families that their loved one has been killed in a motor vehicle accident.
Sheriff Dunn’s full conversation with Jeff Johnson can be heard here
Improvements being considered at City Hall
When the Northfield City Council met for a work session on Tuesday, they heard a presentation about improving 
the customer service and security at City Hall.
As a converted elementary school, the Northfield City Hall is certainly a functional municipal building, but it lacks certain necessary features that make it easier to get around and find a specific office. City administrator Ben Martig said that some of the proposed changes will fix that.
“We think it will improve customer service; we think it will make people more comfortable when they’re in our building. There really isn’t a presence when you come in where there’s a Help Desk. It’s not uncommon when I’m walking through the hallways where I’ll see people staring at the directory signs for where to go in the building. So, it’s like ‘Hey, can I help you?’ or ‘Where can I bring you to?’ So, also, I think we’re going to have at least one office that will have a window into the main level hallway. So, can we make that more prominent to draw people to it and help people when they’re in the building.”
Martig said that improved security is another goal in the proposed changes. Currently some of the offices, which are simply converted classrooms, do not offer any sort of barrier between the staff and visitors, which, in this day and age is both surprising and possibly dangerous. The new barriers will offer a different sort of security as well.
“A new thing that we weren’t paying maybe as much attention to is, we could have airborne illnesses that we’re trying to reduce since we’ve come up with Covid. So, we have temporary barriers right now, but one piece we hadn’t been looking at really seriously before is adding some actual plexiglass in some cases. But now that we know that airborne illnesses are going to be around, we want to try to reduce some of that risk. And it also is another physical barrier. So, we’re looking at some of those pieces.”
Martig said that the city is not looking at a full-on reconstruction project but simply some improvements throughout the building. Among the other changes being discussed are exit doors behind the dais in the Council Chambers. Martig said that the City is looking for funding sources to make the changes and expects to bring the project back to the council’s attention in May or June.
Administrator Ben Martig’s full conversation with Jeff Johnson can be heard here
