Monongalia County students may be doing their learning from within the walls of their actual classrooms this coming week – depending upon what happens at 5 p.m. today in Charleston.
That’s when the county alert map the state Department of Education uses to track the virus will be updated for new week.
If the map shows gold or yellow, Mon Schools chief Eddie Campbell Jr. said, he can foresee a physical return to school around Wednesday.
“I see it as kind of a ‘soft’ opening,” the superintendent said.
“That way the kids, the teachers, everyone, could get acclimated for a full return for the next week.”
Campbell earlier told Board of Education members he would rather see an additional week of remote learning, even if the county did clear orange.
The idea, he said, was so the county could settle in a bit with the positive case numbers, especially since WVU students are also set to in-person classes come Monday.
That was then, though, he said. That was before Gov. Jim Justice revealed the hues of the state Department of Health and Human Resources map during his COVID-19 briefing with reporters Friday.
The DHHR show Mon a solid yellow, just one color below the ideal designation of green.
Both maps work in tandem to track the virus, be it in your hometown or homeroom.
Many watchers of state Department of Education map, meanwhile, have been predicting a reveal of gold today for Mon, which still opens the door.
And, thanks to the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission, it could also mean a return of high school football to Mon next Friday.
The SSAC, Campbell said, decreed that Mon will be designated gold or yellow for the entire week – even if the county waits until Wednesday to return to face-to-face learning.
Under the current statute, a county that can’t go to school, can’t line up a football game, a field show with the marching band or any other extracurricular activity.
Campbell said he appreciates the full week designation under such a permissible color, if Department of Education map is in the same neighborhood with the one used by the DHHR.
Just one more notch to normalcy, the superintendent said, in a time that has been anything but normal.
The coronavirus, though, carries its own normal, he said.
A second positive case in an employee at North Elementary School has been reported by the state Department of Education.
Two weeks ago a student attending limited classes at the school on Chestnut Road tested positive.
That student is among the 75 or so with pronounced cognitive and physical challenges who are taking in face-to-face learning across the district.
The district’s specially designated COVID cleaning crew disinfected the building, while employees still reported to work and students from the above group to class.
Contact tracing is underway for the latest positive case, Campbell said. So are all the other protocols.
Like it or not, the superintendent said, the pandemic is the big man on campus right now.
“We’re just going to have to learn to live with it,” he said.
Right now, he’s giving the district an A for policy and protocol.
“If we keep doing the things we’re supposed to be doing, we’ll be all right.”
