Asked if there is some number of COVID-19 cases or quarantined students and employees beyond which he and the Bulloch County Board of Education would discontinue in-person school, Superintendent Charles Wilson said there is no predetermined threshold.
Currently, 5,961of the Bulloch County Schools’ 10,767 students are designated as attending school in-person, while the other 4,806 were slated to learn from home in the virtual option through fall semester.
But by the time Wilson was interviewed at the conclusion of Thursday night’s board meeting, there had been 26 coronavirus cases confirmed in the school system, resulting in precautionary quarantine of more than 300 individuals. By Monday afternoon, the numbers had risen to 36 known positive cases related to the schools, resulting in 405 people, including students, teachers and staff members, going home to quarantine.
Wilson noted that the strategy for the relaunch of school that his staff developed and the board approved earlier this summer was from the outset an “adaptive” plan.
“To the question about whether this is sustainable, we have planned for it to be based on the distance learning concept,” he said. “We have planned for an adaptable, adaptive approach. Is there a threshold? There is no predetermined threshold because our approach is to continue with school, and this is going to be somewhat fluid.”
Distance learning
Distinct from the preselected virtual option, in which students learn primarily though one of the interactive online programs SchoolsPLP or Edgenuity but with a local teacher to guide them, “distance learning” is to be used temporarily when students, teachers or entire classes previously attending school face-to-face have to go home to quarantine.
For this purpose, services such as Google Meet and Google Classroom are used to connect teachers and their students for real-time lessons. Students who are not ill but have to quarantine are, at least in some instances, sent home with assigned Chromebook laptops.
“We believe between the preparations we’ve made as well as the attitude of our teachers, we’re going to meet our students where we need to meet them,” Wilson said. “So we’re planning for Chromebook distribution and trying to provide the opportunity for that child to be out of the class, continue with their learning so that when they show back up after two weeks we can continue to move forward.”
Teachers who are able and willing also have the opportunity to continue teaching from home, with another teacher, a substitute or a paraprofessional physically present in the classroom. Assistant Superintendent for School Improvement Teresa Phillips said Thursday she did not know whether any quarantined teachers were actually doing this yet.
Phillips, Wilson and Kelly Spence, executive director of curriculum and instruction, all said they hadn’t expected the school system to be using distance learning to this extent so soon.
Wilson also said that the number of people quarantined reflects a very cautious approach the school system has adopted in contact tracing and following Department of Public Health guidelines.
Self-quarantine under is a precautionary measure for people who have come into direct contact, as defined by the DPH, with someone confirmed to have the novel coronavirus. Most of the people quarantined are not sick.
Those who show no symptoms can return to school or work after 14 days. So, some of those quarantined the first week of school should be back at school later this week.