GREENBRIER COUNTY, W.Va. — It will be Monday, Feb. 10th at the earliest before public school students in Greenbrier County return to class.
All public schools were scheduled to stay closed on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for, what Jeff Bryant, Greenbrier County superintendent of schools, said was an attempt to stop the spread of illnesses, including a couple of different types of the flu.
“We’ve been watching the numbers of absenteeism for quite a while now and also working with our medical community to get a kind of barometer of how things are there as well,” Bryant said.
“We just continued to see an upclimb in the absenteeism rate.”
The closure decision in Greenbrier County was made Tuesday in consultation with medical professionals and officials at the Greenbrier County Health Department.
A day earlier, more than 1,000 of Greenbrier County’s 4,800 public school students were absent from school, according to Bryant.
In response, “Let’s get the kids out of schools, let’s do our best to disinfect all touch surfaces, all desks, all large areas, basically do a deep cleaning. Give some time for students to recover from this flu situation,” he said.
All three days were “Reimagined Days,” meaning students had assignments in previously passed out packets to complete and would not have to make up the missed school days later in the school year.
While students were home in Greenbrier County on Wednesday, faculty and staff members were alternating their time between communications with students and school cleaning work.
Food distributions were also being offered to students throughout Greenbrier County because of the school closures.
“Everyone, the whole community, is just rallying together during this three-day period of time to do the main thing and that’s take care of our kids,” Bryant said.
“Hopefully, we can come back to school next Monday and we’ll get back off to where we need to be.”