West Virginia students are going back to school.
During his Wednesday, Dec. 30, coronavirus response media-briefing, Gov. Jim Justice outlined the state’s plan for school children to return to in-person education. According to Justice, and the state’s coronavirus-response team, middle school and elementary school students will be back in their school buildings beginning on Tuesday, Jan. 19.
While the color-coded county education map will remain in use, its significance will be relegated to the service of county high schools. As of Jan. 19, high schools in any county designated as red on the map will transition to remote learning. All other county schools within the state will remain in-person, regardless of their color designation on the education map.
“Today is the first step to mitigating the widening gap,” State Superintendent of Schools W. Clayton Burch said during Wednesday’s briefing.
“We have to get our kids back in school,” Justice said. “That’s just all there is to it. All across this nation, many states with far worse numbers than we have are finding ways within the recommendations of our CDC and our medical teams. Here’s what we know — during 2020 we learned that COVID-19 transmission rates in our schools, during the first semester, were 0.02% amongst students and 0.3% [ ] among our staff.”
Justice went on to say that wearing masks and socially distancing must continue, before explaining that with virtual learning, “we really tried, but we’re failing. The virtual learning models do not work without consistent live engagement from a teacher.”
“Bad things are happening to kids,” Justice said. “Stuff that’s just unheard of. It’s just terrible and we’re not even getting it reported now. [ ] So we’ve got a bunch of kids who are out there suffering and bad things are happening.“
Justice also stated that the transmission rate of COVID-19 among children 15-years old and above is “significantly higher” than those younger than 15-years-old. This is the primary reasoning behind the decision for high schools to continue using the weekly education map.
“I am announcing that all West Virginia elementary and middle schools will be reopened to in-person learning on Tuesday, Jan. 19,” Justice said. “This gives our county boards of education, our students, our teachers and staff a little more than two weeks to prepare. We’re taking that two-weeks because we need the time to get ready.
For all the high schools, we’re continuing to use our map and we’re continuing through the weekend to work on the possibilities of tweaking our map to some degree. [ ] One of the tweaks that we’re going to do is offer back in-school learning in all of the counties that are in the orange. We’re going to continue through the weekend to look at the map because these are the kids that the transmission rate is surely much higher than our younger kids. Honestly, our much younger kids are so much safer at our schools. And our teachers and our service personnel, other than your house, are really safe at our schools. But to take this one step more, all of our high schools will continue to not go to school in the red, but they will go to school in the orange.”
In addition to the changes with the education model, it was also announced that the start of winter sports would be once again pushed back and are now scheduled to begin on March 1.
Justice indicated that this new education plan is not an “order”, but he hopes that county school officials will do all they can to follow it for their students.
The West Virginia Daily News will provide additional information as details become available.
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