ST. PAUL (AP) — New state guidance that will enable Minnesota’s youngest learners to head back to school next month is getting cheers from urban districts, jeers from rural schools and a mixed response from teachers.

Within hours of Gov. Tim Walz’s announcement that elementary schools soon can operate at full capacity, even as coronavirus case rates remain high, some of the state’s largest school districts said they’d move as quickly as possible.

Anoka-Hennepin, Osseo, Elk River and Robbinsdale all said they would resume a full-time, in-person schedule for grades 2 and under on Jan. 19, with grades 3 to 5 joining them two weeks later.

St. Paul Public Schools said it will make the same transition, starting Feb. 1.

“We know students are more successful when they are face-to-face with their teachers and engaging socially with their peers, so we are enthusiastic about bringing our youngest scholars back under the governor’s revised plan and we hope case rates will continue to decline so that staff is less at risk,” Osseo spokeswoman Barb Olson said by email Friday.

The change in state guidance means elementary school leaders no longer will have to monitor weekly reports on county-level coronavirus data when deciding whether they can open, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported.

Under the state’s previous rules, Ramsey County’s latest case rate would have been more than five times too high for a fully in-person elementary schedule.

Metro superintendents are “really glad that they have a new approach,” said Deb Henton, executive director of the Minnesota Association of School Administrators.

Walz went further than school leaders expected by allowing any elementary school to run at full capacity.

The onerous hybrid schedules, with students splitting learning time between home and school, no longer are required in those grades, no matter how prevalent the virus is in their counties.

“Hybrid was a difficult model for schools to implement. It was really hard on our teachers,” Henton said.

Anoka-Hennepin made the hybrid schedule work but it was hard on teachers and families, spokesman Jim Skelly said.

“It wasn’t an ideal situation for the long term,” he said.

William Hanage, Harvard University associate professor of epidemiology, said hybrid schemes might be more risky than in-person school schedules because children who require child care outside the home come into contact with more people. And if kids are in school every day, it’ll be easier to trace their contacts if there is an infection.

“You have more power to regulate people while they’re in the school than you can when there’s an ad hoc, getting a bunch of people in a room because the parents have to work,” Hanage said in an interview.

St. Cloud is among the few districts that still intends to use a hybrid schedule for elementary schools before transitioning to fully in-person.

Since the school year began, the state’s larger, urban districts have pulled back on in-person instruction as Minnesota became one of the world’s worst coronavirus hotspots, and with too many teachers out sick or on quarantine.

But many smaller districts have kept their schools open while continuing to take precautions to keep the virus from spreading.

Walz’s new guidance requires schools to be even more careful. Teachers will have to wear face shields in addition to masks, students must stay in their primary classrooms for meals, music and art, and schools must make coronavirus testing available to staff every two weeks.

Already, rural school leaders are pushing back.

In Hawley, east of Fargo, North Dakota, elementary students have been in their classrooms full-time since September. The school changed its schedule to allow for greater social distancing and is using its gymnasium as a second lunchroom.

Both Hawley schools have had outbreaks, but as of mid-December no elementary students or staff had a known infection, Superintendent Phil Jensen said.

“It’s very difficult to tell your staff that now they have to wear a mask and a shield. What we’ve been doing since Sept. 8 has been working,” he said.

Jensen sees the new state guidance as helping Twin Cities schools. He wishes state officials would pay closer attention to what the rural schools need.

“There’s a lot of frustration here in west-central Minnesota with superintendents,” he said.

Henton said that after a call between superintendents and the state education department, she expects the state at least will relax the requirement that students eat at their desks.