At the end of the school day on March 20, 2020, “normal” vanished throughout the states of Ohio and West Virginia, and it’s not been seen since.
There’s been virtual only, and then two days or four days or no days in actual classrooms based on the state’s Covid Alert Map. Green is good, Red is bad, and the Yellow, Gold, and Orange rainbow in between has determined the operations of school systems in all 55 counties.
No matter what the shade, though, at least 20 percent of the school district’s population has opted to remain remote in fear of infection, so those platforms have not only remained in place, but they also have evolved over the last 12 months. Even with the five days of in-class instruction that will be offered beginning Monday, those wishing to stay home and continue online learning will retain that option.
“For the most part over the past year we have been doing a lot of remote learning because of Covid and the state mandates,” explained Rick Jones, assistant superintendent of Ohio County Schools. “There’s been a lot of great work that has gone into offering the best we could to our students when they were not allowed into our buildings. We chose to do that instead of purchasing a canned program because we believed it was the best thing for our students.
“Our teachers have done an outstanding job with those platforms, and they have evolved them, too, over time, to include more teacher-to-student instruction online,” he said. “Our teachers really wanted to maintain that connection with their students, and that was still the feeling when we returned to school after the holiday break. But here we are, a couple of months later, and the numbers are low enough for us to open our schools again to five days of in-person instruction for the final nine or 10 weeks of the school year.”
It’s going to be different, though, despite its resemblance to what most teachers, administrators, parents, and students still recognize as “normal.”
“When we do go back to five days per week next week, it will honestly feel a little weird because it’s been this way for so long,” he said. “And I am sure it’s going to feel weird for our students because they have had the Wednesday of each week to go about it their way instead of the in-school way. It’s really hard to believe it’s been a year.”
Sports and Virtual
The virtual learning platforms offered to students of Ohio County Schools involve platforms like Schoolology and others, and synchronous and asynchronous instruction have been included. Participation has been OK; it could be better, but it remains an available education for students that can be enhanced by phone calls and one-on-one interaction.
“A lot of states have stopped doing contract tracing with six feet of social distancing considered, so if a student-athlete was within the six feet of someone who tests positive, they have to quarantine for at least 10 days, and that means they would miss every game and practice that takes place during that time,” Jones reported. “That’s why we have so many of the students-athletes choosing remote only to protect their eligibility for the sports teams they are on.
“Those athletes would come back to the schools once their season is over, and right now we do not know how many of those students will choose the same approach. They do have that option, and it’s something hard to argue against,” he said. “It is something that has started this week, and if all of the student-athletes on all of the winter sports make the same choice, we could have about 80 additional students doing remote-only learning.”
Go Time!
The teachers and staff members of Ohio County Schools have been vaccinated, the numbers of positive cases in Ohio County has significantly dipped the past five weeks, and the service personnel employees have been in scrub-down mode for months.
That’s why Jones believes all involved are prepared for a monumental Monday.
“I’m not sure anyone thought we would get there, and, at first, we really thought it was going to take an extreme amount of time to pull off the five days of instruction, and that’s why initially we didn’t plan on doing it. We were going to stay for the four days per week with Wednesdays being a virtual day,” he said. “But we had a lot of conversations with our teachers and principals, and what we found out was that it was possible. Then the state Board of Education and Gov. Justice recommended that the kids go back five days, so that’s what we will begin on Monday.”
But “normal” won’t be completely normal.
“The fact we have about 19 or 20 percent of our parents who want their children to continue on the virtual platforms, we’ll have a two-hour delay on Wednesdays so our teachers can get the online instruction prepared. That’s going to be difficult, but they are determined to take care of those students, too,” Jones said. “It’s going to be a sacrifice on their part, and they have sacrificed this whole time, but they’re determined.”
