The Butler Area School District is gradually reopening all of its schools beginning with a trial run with the elementary schools next week.

In-person instruction will begin Dec. 10 at all six elementary schools and the Center Avenue Community School.

If all goes well, in-person instruction will begin Dec. 14 at the middle school, intermediate high school and senior high school using the hybrid cohort model. In that model, in-person instruction will be provided to half of the students in each building at a time on an alternating basis.

Because of the number of teachers in quarantine due to COVID-19, in-person instruction will begin at the elementary schools before the secondary schools, Superintendent Brian White said.

Secondary teachers will be reassigned to the elementary schools if needed, he said. In-person instruction would then begin at the secondary schools if enough teachers are available, he said.

The number of COVID-19 cases among students and staff at each building is low enough to begin resuming live, in-person instruction, he said.

“We have established building-level thresholds for each building. At this point, we're below the thresholds,” White said.

He said parents will still have the option to keep their children in remote instruction.

“We leave it up to the family,” White said.

In a message he posted on the district website, he said new guidance from the state allows school districts to close some schools and keep other schools open based on the number of cases in each building.

“This means at any given time, we could have some schools operating remotely, while others are able to operate in person. For example, it's possible that some of our K-4 elementary schools may be able to remain open, while other K-4 schools (including self-contained special education classrooms) must operate remotely,” the message says.

He said it can take as few as two positive cases in the smaller school to trigger reverting to remote instruction.