Did Gov. Jim Justice create a new gold standard for coronavirus reporting on Tuesday?
Probably not, Fred Albert and Dale Lee said.
In fact, the two teacher-union presidents said, gold may only serve to make those already murky COVID numbers even more so.
Albert is president of the West Virginia chapter of the American Federation of Teachers.
Lee heads the West Virginia Education Association.
After a lengthy, after-hours meeting with health and others the day before, Justice announced the addition of the gold to the color-coded alert map which tracks COVID-19 cases across the state.
That hue, the governor told reporters, will define the gray area, as it were, between orange and red on the map.
By mandate of his office and the state Department of Education, if your county is showing orange or red on any given week, your kid doesn’t go to school and his football team doesn’t play.
The color orange is the original map, Justice said, cut two wide of a swath, punishing the school districts of those counties on the cusp.
Albert, though, said the new color only adds a new shadow to the level of confusion on the map.
“AFT-West Virginia questions the effectiveness of a constantly changing metric for school attendance,” Albert said in a statement.
“Employees, parents, and students need a system they can trust and easily understand,” he continued.
“While the ultimate goal is for every student to be taught in-person, the governor should not pursue that goal at the expense of any child or employee’s health and safety.”
Gold on the new map acknowledges 10 to 14.9 cases of COVID-19 infection per 100,000 people.
Boone, Fayette, Logan, Mingo and Putnam counties were upgraded from orange – meaning as gold counties their students can go to school and their schools can field football teams, so long as their respective boards of education say they can.
Speaking by telephone from his home Tuesday evening, Lee said the WVEA was “angered” by the upgrade.
The decision, he said, was driven in part, by the Friday Night Lights of football and not the guiding light of science.
“I’m a teacher and a coach,” he said.
“And I can tell you, no one wants to be in front of his students in the classroom more. No one wants to be on the sidelines with his players more. But we have to safe.”
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Mon remains is the only county on the alert map showing map.
Consistency, Albert and Lee both said, should be the school rule in Morgantown and Mon.
Especially, they said, since a Morgantown High employee just tested positive and WVU football kicked off at a near-empty Milan Puskar Stadium last week – while local police student neighborhoods, on the prowl for house parties.
WVU President Gordon Gee, meanwhile, tweeted an apology after photographs circulated on social media showing him shopping without a mask.
Get something that works and keep with it, said Nancy Walker, president of the Monongalia County Board of Education.
Such as the BOE’s relationship with the county health department, she said.
“They’re directing us. We have to follow the recommendations. We can’t do things willy-nilly.”
Tom Bloom, the Monongalia County Commissioner and former high school guidance counselor in the district, says data helps make the grade, too.
Bloom said and other officials are meeting virtually Thursday morning to talk COVID-19 in the county, to the results of last weekend’s testing a Mylan Park to what the recent Labor Day holiday weekend could mean for the coronavirus and WVU.
“We invited the governor,” he said.
