Schools strive to stay on task
The Holly Springs School District has avoided any changes to the method of instruction due to COVID-19, while one school in the Marshall County School District went to virtual learning Tuesday.
Holly Springs
In-person classes continue on all campuses, as of the start of this week.
“Overall, things are going well,” said Irene Turnage, superintendent of the Holly Springs School District. “I applaud the students; most of them have come back seemingly more focused and working hard.”
She said the city schools are not dealing with a lot of cases of COVID — approximately less than 1 percent.”
The cases are usually reported from home,” Turnage said. “When we are notified of a positive case, we complete the contact tracing process and quarantine any students who may have been exposed. As a result, we have had some students who have been quarantined based on the district COVID guidelines and procedures.”
She said parents sometimes feel they are not being notified if their child may have been exposed.
“We continue to explain to parents that a close contact for exposure, defined by Center of Disease Control (CDC), is any individual that is within six feet of the individual with COVID for more than 15 minutes,” Turnage said. “We continue to assure parents that we always notify all parents of the students who were determined to be in close contact of a confirmed case.”
Turnage said a challenge comes from rumors spread about COVID cases “that are usually not true or highly exaggerated.”
Last week the Mississippi State Board of Education voted to allow school districts to use hybrid scheduling, if needed, to minimize the spread of COVID. The option is available through October 31. Typically, hybrid means attending school in-person for part of the week and attending the remainder remotely.
“We are still in-person,” Turnage said, “and for now, that is how we plan to continue.
“If numbers increase to where it endangers the safety of students and staff or causes a major disruption to instruction, the district will consider hybrid. Based on the very low numbers in the schools right now, it is not in the plan.”
Marshall County
Roy Lawson, superintendent of the Marshall County School District, said Byhalia Middle School students have gone into a two-week period of virtual learning due to COVID.
“Students without reliable internet will be given paper materials to complete, and those will need to be completed and turned in weekly,” he said.
“Students with the internet will be asked to log on with a school representative daily for attendance and will have times throughout the day to get help with assignments.”
Virtual learning at BMS will continue until the day after Labor Day (September 7).
Overall, he said the school year is off to a good start.
He said all county schools have had some cases of COVID, but he would not call it substantial at this point.
“We are monitoring each case and then we will determine if or when we need to make adjustments to our schedules (at other schools),” Lawson said.
“We have discussed the possibility of shortening the school day and doing the last part of some days online or virtual. We still have to meet the requirements of MDE of making sure each student has 330 minutes of instruction per day. But those are very preliminary discussions, and our goal is to do as much in-person learning as possible. We just believe inperson learning is the best way to meet the educational needs of our children.”
Lawson said the district realizes as the number of cases continues to rise statewide, moving to virtual learning or a hybrid schedule is always a possibility at any school.
“We are working on some ways to do this and still meet the requirements set forth by the department of education,” he said.
Several schools across the state have had to make a switch to virtual or hybrid learning for a designated time period due to COVID outbreaks.