Plans to safely return to school August 24th were discussed at Wednesday’s Washington School Board meeting. Superintendent Willie Stone is gathering supplies now for every teacher and student, so they’ll have access to personal protective equipment, “Right now I’m currently purchasing masks for every teacher and shields for every teacher so that we have those. I already have about 10,000 masks big and small for kids if they want to wear them. We’re looking at shields to see if we can purchase shields. The challenge right now that I’m having is finding youth shields. Because I think if we require anything, it would be a shield. Our logic behind that is, we just talked to public health and they feel that would be the best thing, especially for younger kids you might be able to keep the shields on a little bit better than you can the masks. So, we haven’t made that decision yet. But we’ll have everything that we need, that if we go that way we’ll have it. … That’s not something parents will have to be responsible for.” Stone adds that shields can also help students see teachers’ expressions and communicate clearly, especially with young children learning language.

The district plans to decide in early August about face mask or shield usage for the fall.

There are surveys out for students, staff, and parents to take regarding returning to school as COVID-19 continues to circulate. Parents will be asked to do temperature checks each morning before sending kids to school; staff will need to do the same. Stone says attendance, participation, and coursework are required, but they’re working on alternatives and flexibility, “Attendance is required. So, we’re trying to figure that attendance policy out, especially right now we have about 17% of our families have said that if we go back to school they will not send their kids back. So, we want to make sure that we’re trying, that we’re in the process of trying to figure out how we can capture classrooms and put those on the web so those people who don’t come back are able to at least to get the education and get the assignments put on web up for them so they can stay along and stay up.” Lessons may be recorded and then put online at the end of the day.

At the end of June, the district submitted its 63-page Return to Learn plan to the state, which includes contingencies if there is a need to go to virtual learning.

This week, local COVID-19 case counts have continued to rise. As of Thursday, Washington County had 248 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 219 of those recovered so far, and there have been nine deaths in the county.