Zero hour for Monongalia County Schools is 9 p.m., this Saturday.
That’s when the state Department of Health and Human Resources updates the COVID-19 map that charts the spread of the coronavirus in all 55 counties.
The county spilled over into the “orange” category Monday, owing a jump in cases attributed mainly to WVU students testing positive in recent days.
If you’re orange, the state Department of Education says, you go distance-learning — at least until the following zero-hour Saturday, when the map updates with new numbers.
That’s a black-and-white directive for the color-coded chart.
No exceptions.
And, no fall football (or any other seasonal sports) until your county is able to sidle back into the yellow zone, or, better yet, green.
Mon’s Board of Education met in special session Tuesday to discuss the latest development mixed in with an ongoing concern from teachers in the district.
A letter from the Faculty Senate of Morgantown High School expressed a vote of no-confidence in the district’s already set plan to go with a blended-learning option for the first nine weeks of the term, based on parental feedback in surveys and online registration venues.
The pandemic is just too unpredictable, the faculty senate said in the letter, to have people safely in school buildings right now.
Mon Schools, the body continued, should have opted for total remote learning — at least for the first nine weeks — and again chided the school board and district for not adequately communicating the message.
Either way, if the numbers keep charting the way they have been, it appears that COVID-19 has already made the choice for back-to-school in the county.
For the first week, anyway.
More than 200 WVU students have tested positive from July to the present, according to numbers culled by the university.
Mon County, meanwhile, went into Tuesday with 1,170 positive cases, the DHHR reported.
As of Tuesday morning, the DHHR chronicled 10,507 across the state, while reporting an additional eight deaths, the youngest being a 41-year-old woman from Mingo County.
Mon Schools, though, has also been adding to its numbers.
Deputy Schools Superintendent Donna Talerico reported during the meeting that three additional nurses are in the process of being hired, expanding the team of medical professionals to 15 for the district.
Masks and personal protective equipment has been delivered to schools and classrooms, she said, and each school in the county now has a specially outfitted “COVID-19 room” for the benefit of any student or staffer who should present symptoms.
The idea of the meeting, and all the measures, said BOE President Nancy Walker, is to do what the MHS senate accused the district of not doing: Communicating, in the time of the coronavirus.
Mon Schools chief Eddie Campbell Jr. said he understood the anxiety, especially coming from the teachers at Morgantown High, which has a normal enrollment of around 1,900.
That number, though, he said, will be considerably less this year, with the mix of blended and remote learning.
“You’ll have approximately 600 to 650 kids per day at Morgantown High,” he said.
“That’s still a lot, but in a building that size, there’s room to spread out.”
Talerico, meanwhile, said she’ll carve out space in front of her computer monitor, come 9 p.m. Saturday.
“It’ll be ‘must-see TV,’ ” she said, invoking the old tagline from NBC Television.
“We all know what we’ll be watching.”
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