News Photo by Crystal Nelson Mason, 7, and Angel Barrett, 11, of Alpena, play on the swingset on Wednesday at Lincoln Elementary School.

ALPENA — Local school leaders are working behind the scenes to ensure students can return to the classroom safely after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer today announced in-person learning would return in the fall.

More details of the requirements, guidelines, and recommendations for safe schooling are expected to be released on June 30, Whitmer said.

Michigan students finished out the 2019-20 school year online and through correspondence courses after Whitmer closed schools March 12 in an effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, which had just hit the state.

As of today, 104 Alpena County residents,18 Alcona County residents, 12 Presque Isle County residents, and five Montmorency County residents have been infected with the virus. Two-thirds of those cases are linked to staff and residents at MediLodge of Alpena. More than 100 of those infected have recovered. Thirteen have died.

Gordon Snow, president of the Alpena Public Schools Board of Education, said officials discussed what returning to school might look like long before Whitmer’s announcement.

Among the things being discussed are policies for screening staff, students, and visitors, determining social distancing requirements in cafeterias and on the playgrounds, transportation to and from school, and what to do if someone were diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. He said district officials are also discussing what a cleaning program might look like.

District officials would like to have more information by the end of the month, Snow said, as there are also staffing and budget issues that need to be addressed. Schools are required to approve balanced budgets by June 30, although it isn’t clear how much revenue they might get from the state, which is looking at billions of dollars in revenue lost during coronavirus-related shutdowns.

“We have to be mindful of all of those things, and, even if we have great plans, we have to be able to afford them, somehow,” he said.

Also of concern: A statewide survey released earlier this month showed large majorities of Michigan educators are worried about the effect of coronavirus restrictions on everything from teacher evaluations to standardized tests to a new law that’s supposed to hold back third-graders who don’t meet state benchmarks on reading. And a third of educators said the virus had made them consider leaving the profession.

Schools have been “a pretty lonely place” without students, and there’s no substitute for in-class learning, Rogers City Area Schools Superintendent Nick Hein said.

Hein said he has talked with officials from the Cheboygan-Otsego-Presque Isle Educational Service District about ways to improve cleanliness at the school. The only question Hein said remains for him is whether students are going to be required to wear masks in the classroom.

“I think that would be a very tough thing to enforce, especially with your younger kids — kindergarteners all the way up to middle school — but that would be the only real big, glaring question I’ve not received an answer on,” he said.

Alcona Community Schools officials have planned for three options, Superintendent Dan O’Connor said: face-to-face instruction, while offering an online option for students uncomfortable with returning to school, a hybrid option for smaller groups students to split their time in class and online, and a remote experience like the district implemented this spring.

“Our goal is to build a program that would almost allow us to seamlessly navigate all three of those,” he said. “That way, we’re kind of ready for whatever may present in the fall. Without clear guidelines from the state, at this point, both safety-wise, educationally, and financially, it makes it almost impossible to close in on any firm plan.”