Donna Talerico, who serves as Monongalia County’s deputy schools superintendent, began her career in education as an elementary school teacher.
So did a lot of the other administrators in the district’s central office.
With the call to make masks optional beginning next week, many of those administrators, including her, are reverting to those familiar roles.
Facial coverings across county schools will become a matter of choice March 2, and Talerico and her colleagues will use that time to get students and parents ready for the shift back to the way it was — almost — before COVID moved in.
Especially those students just out of kindergarten, and into the younger grades, who don’t know what it is like to not wear a mask to school.
Which means, she said, lesson plans of respect: Just like the ones she used to craft in her classrooms.
“Some children are still going to wear masks,” she said. “That’s because of decisions made by their families, and everyone has to respect that.”
That goes for their classmates for whom the lifting of the mask will be a celebration, the deputy superintendent added.
“We want to make sure everyone is sensitive to families and their choices,” she said.
A lot of parents turned out for the Mon Board of Education Tuesday intent on asking BOE members to respect, and grant, what they wanted.
Which is what they got, before they had the chance to officially ask.
With the blessing of Dr. Lee B. Smith, the county’s medical director, BOE members made the call to make masking optional after this week.
That’s because positive cases here are on the decided downside, Smith said.
Mon and Preston counties were yellow Wednesday on the county alert map maintained by the state Department of Health and Human Services.
Neighboring Marion was among the 27 counties presenting in green.
Mon’s district, in the meantime, ended last week with 42 positive cases in its student population that nearly numbers 12,000.
Talerico said keeping masks in place for everyone during these remaining days makes for an easing-in that the pandemic hasn’t always allowed — in the 700-plus days and counting that it’s been a presence in the Mountain State.
Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr. is also sending a letter across the district to parents today, about the call to scale back on the masking.
Principals are doing the same for the parents of the children who attend their schools, Talerico said.
Even in an unprecedented pandemic, she said, it can still come down to what one learned in kindergarten.
“It’s about being kind to everyone.”
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