One item is on the agenda for the Washington School Board’s special session this week – the district’s return to learn plan. Last week in a work session, Superintendent Willie Stone shared the administration’s proposal for what school will look like when classes start three weeks from now. The proposal includes all staff and students wearing face coverings. Students will have intermittent 10-minute breaks from them throughout the day. The district will provide face shields and has thousands of masks on hand.

Stone says social distancing is key with people keeping six feet of distance from each other, “This is really hard because educationally, how we present education to our students, we are actually going backwards the way that we’re doing this. We’re going to go back to rows, we’re going to spread people out, and the teacher is going to teach from the front of the classroom. Which is what we’ve tried to get away from for years now, but we’re going to go back to that.”

Students in pre-school through second grade will have the least time with face coverings. Younger students will stay in cohorts with their classrooms, including when they eat lunch and go to recess.

The board will officially vote on the measures in the special meeting which begins at 7 p.m. Thursday. It can be viewed remotely on the district’s YouTube channel – click here.

As of Monday, Washington County had 287 total confirmed cases, 11 deaths, and a recovery rate of 91%, with 23 active cases of COVID-19 in Washington County.