LISBON — Lisbon schools are ramping up in-person learning for students next week after a spike in COVID-19 cases in early December forced the school to switch to partial remote learning.

The School Committee on Thursday unanimously voted to move most grades at Lisbon Community School and Philip W. Sugg Middle School to in-person instruction Monday through Thursday starting next week.

The exceptions are grades 4, 5 and 8, which will continue with in-person instruction two days and remote learning two days a week, due to larger class sizes.

The committee also voted to move Lisbon High School from remote-only learning to a hybrid model that will have students attend in-person classes two days a week and learning from home online two days a week.

Friday will be reserved for students to do online work from home and for schools to do contact tracing for any future COVID-19 cases that arise.

“Ultimately our goal is to get kids full in-person because it is what’s best for them,” Superintendent Richard Green said.

Lisbon schools reopened in September to full in-person learning five days a week and didn’t offer a remote-only option.

Lisbon High School was closed the week of Dec. 7 due to an increase in COVID-19 cases and so construction could be finished at the school to improve the school’s air quality. Green said at the time there had been five positive cases reported from four different high school families. Those cases also impacted the middle school, Gartley Street School and 15 teachers districtwide, Green said.

The following week, high school students moved to remote-only learning. Lisbon Community School, Philip W. Sugg Middle School and Gartley Street School switched to a mix of in-person instruction and remote online instruction.

Students continued school on Jan. 4 after Christmas break no COVID-19 cases have been reported in the schools since then, Green said. School officials will continue to monitor the case numbers to determine the best school models, which could change very quickly, Green said.

There have been 23,193 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Maine and 2,449 confirmed cases in Androscoggin County as of Wednesday, the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports. There have been 76 cases of COVID-19 in Lisbon and 95 cases in Lisbon Falls as of Jan. 3.

Patti Mendelson, the president of Lisbon’s teacher union, said she has no complaints about the decisions by the school district on school learning models. She argued the schools have done everything they can to keep students safe during a pandemic. She’s never had to ask as a student to put on a mask, she said.

“We like being full-in (instruction),” Mendelson said Thursday.

A middle school science teacher, Mendelson acknowledged the latest learning plan isn’t an entirely equitable model since some of her colleagues will have full classes of students compared to her classes of 10 to 12 students. While it’s not an optimal model, “we’re looking for as much normalcy as we can possibly get but we need to community’s help,” she said. “We need kids to do what they’re supposed to do when not in school.”

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